A Spring of Sorrow

by Arthur Mongelli

  When they returned to camp, Mark avoided talking with Amber altogether. He walked a circuit around the camp, steering clear of Grayson's men as well as any of the deeper shadows in the forest around them that might house the undead. Finally, as night started descending on the camp, still early at this time of the year, he made his way back to the tent he shared with Amber. He found her sitting outside it, wrapped in a blanket to fend off the chilly spring air. When she spotted him approaching she retreated back inside the tent without meeting his eye. At least if she is mad, I won’t have to talk to her about my worries, he thought as he drew a deep breath and ducked inside the tent.

  “Everyone else has been back for two hours, Mark!” she started as he began unlacing his boots.

  “I know, Am. I'm sorry. Grayson had me doing some other stuff,” he lied.

  Early the next afternoon the entire camp started moving southwards, at a snail's pace, towards the military compound. Mark and Amber stayed near the middle of the procession out of fear for their safety. Amber was extremely excited with the prospect of being inside the base and having a strong barricade keeping the dead away. Mark still struggled between his worries for Amber and his own fears of life without protectors. He was quiet and withdrawn, something Amber attributed to the argument of the night previous.

  The base itself was rather small, being little more than a fortified communications depot. It had little in the way of space and amenities that larger bases could accommodate. The fence ran for roughly a hundred yards on each side, encompassing an operations building, a barracks building that housed many of the current military occupants, a mess hall that was broken into two sections, officers and enlisted, and a handful of bungalows that housed the officers. Grayson occupied one of the bungalows, its previous tenant, a Second Lieutenant, had earlier carried his gear angrily into the barracks. Grayson's trustees set up their tents in a ring, encompassing his bungalow.

  Mark, Amber and the rest of the civilians were directed to set up their camp on the west side of the fence, near the latrine and within smell of the burn pile. They set up their tent among their neighbors, huddled closely together for security. The soldiers and Grayson's trustees, their protectors, were on the other side of the base, well out of sight. Early that first evening, Grayson approached the tents accompanied by the base commander.

  “Gentlemen, ladies, this is Lieutenant Baker. This is his base. His base, his rules. Make sure you listen closely and follow his orders to the letter.”

  Grayson stepped aside, deferring to the Lieutenant.

  “Ladies, gentlemen. If you are going to eat our food, you are going to work for it. This isn't a day spa, here only work gets rewarded. As a whole, your duties will be emptying the latrines, trash pickup and post-meal cleanup. We have about forty servicemen here, and they will likely be barking orders at you as well. You should do your best to see that these orders are followed as well, within reason.”

  “What are we? Slaves?” someone asked from the shadows at the rear of the tent village.

  “Call it what you will,” Baker responded without missing a beat. “This is a military outfit, if you want our protection, you will do what is necessary to attain it. If you don't, if you prefer the company of the undead, the gate is there, just ask permission to leave and we will open it for you.”

  A hush came over the murmuring audience at that point. Amber and Mark shared a nervous look.

  “Zero-six-hundred every morning is burn time, human waste, bodies, trash. . .all of it goes on that pile out there,” Baker continued, pointing at the smoldering pile of debris that sat on the opposite side of the steel fencing. “We do not tolerate disease on the base, all of it gets burned. The latrines need to be emptied every morning once the fires get going. No exceptions, no excuses.”

  With that, Lt. Baker spun on his heel and walked away, leaving Grayson with his people to smooth the ruffled feathers.

  *

  Almost in unison, Tim and Will started to draw their weapons. A shrill scream split the air, freezing them in mid-draw.

  “Nobody fucking move or you all get it!” the little voice commanded.

  Incredulous stares drifted beyond the hulking man to a tiny middle aged woman who stood just behind and to his right. She stood an impressive four feet ten inches tall and couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds. In her hands sat the biggest machine gun any of them had ever seen someone holding. It had a grenade launcher under the rifle barrel and looked like it was on the verge of toppling the diminutive woman holding it. The veins stood out on the woman's slender arms as she held it aloft, threateningly. She had a fire in her eyes that led no one to doubt that she would use the weapon, even if they doubted her ability to control it.

  “Lady, I ain't one of them,” the hulking biker growled as he struggled with Jen, who fought like a woman possessed.

  The struggle continued for a moment longer, until the man got a solid grip on both of her wrists. He tugged her wrists to the opposite sides of her body, wrapping her arms back around her, stilling her thrashing. Even immobilized, she still struggled, craning her neck back around in an effort to bite his arms.

  “Let her go,” Will demanded loudly in order to be heard over the undead drumming on the glass mere three feet behind them.

  The man looked at Will with a pleading look, as if to ask for help.

  “Jen, stop!” Will shouted, snapping the woman's attention away from her perceived attacker.

  The hulking man took advantage of her hesitation and shoved her roughly away, sending her sliding on her butt towards the rest of the group. He stepped back quickly, moving to the side of the little woman and drawing a pistol of his own. Laura's grip loosened and Christine slid to the floor where she noisily resumed her moaning. The fast undead outside seemed to redouble their efforts at the noise, raging against the doors. The glass shattered and the windows bowed inwards, but the steel wire that reinforced the glass held for the time being. Laura crouched down by her side to comfort her. The little woman heard the commotion and struggled to catch sight of the source of the moaning, looking between the legs of the rest.

  “Jesus, is she?” the woman asked, her voice trailed off and was barely audible over the undead struggling and hammering on the doors.

  Tim nodded soberly, still frozen in place with the heavy machine gun still aimed at his chest.

  “We need to get some supplies to help her,” Tim stated flatly. “The pharmacy.”

  “First thing I need you all to do, is to drop the weapons,” the small woman commanded, snapping her attention off the moaning pregnant girl. “Then we will see what we can do for the girl.”

  Jen, Will, and Tim exchanged glances, recognizing the futility of arguing. They knew they didn't stand a chance in a gunfight versus the heavy rifle, even if the barrel went wild, first few rounds would surely count, and there was the big man and his pistol to contend with as well. Tim reacted first, bending forwards slowly and laying his pistol on the ground a few feet in front of him. Jen and Will followed suit.

  “Kick them over to Peter,” the woman said absently having resumed peering through their legs, transfixed on Christine writhing about on the floor.

  Once Peter had collected the guns, he threw them on top of a full grocery cart filled with food and supplies that sat just behind them.

  “Now, please, get the fuck away from those doors before those things smash their way through,” the woman said before nervously adding, “And don't anyone try anything.”

  The group was escorted at gunpoint into the pitch black, moving to the rear of the store. Will and Laura helped the nearly-immobile Christine while Tim and Jen ushered the kids along. The hammering on the front glass seemed to dissipate a bit as they moved into the darkness. Peter and the woman steered them to the pharmacy door, the roll-cage that closed the front counter off was still down and locked, but the side door had been knocked open at some point, a sledgehammer lay on the ground just outside it. Once inside, they set up a
few electric lanterns to light the area and closed the door, barricading it by sliding a shelf of vitamins across it.

  “Looks like we are all gonna spend the night here,” the little woman said absently, staring intently at Christine. “Is she gonna pop tonight?”

  “No idea,” Laura said. “She's been laboring for most of the day now.”

  “Well, get her comfortable. No point in making her stand there. Saw some pillows on display over by the seafood section if one of you wants to go grab some.”

  Once Christine was settled comfortably into a nest of pillows, the woman lowered the machine gun and set it on the counter next to where she sat. Peter still held his pistol, the .44 magnum rest easily in his massive paw.

  “Hope I didn't hurt you, miss,” Peter said quietly to Jen, his eyes were looking at the ground and he looked ashamed.

  He was a huge man, easily six foot six inches and probably three-hundred and fifty pounds, which made Jen's fight with him all the more impressive. Jen eyed the man suspiciously, still unsettled by the unexpected collision and ensuing struggle with the massive man.

  “I'd be more willing to forgive if you'd put that gun away,” she said at length.

  “I get you don't like us being the only ones with guns,” the woman cast back. “But I don't particularly like strangers and it looks like we are gonna be stuck here together, for the night at least. You brought a shit-ton of those things down on us right when we were leaving. Our truck is out front, gonna have to keep quiet and hope they move along.”

  “Jane, that girl's got to keep it down. Those things are never going to move on if she keeps up that ra-”

  Jane's hand whipped around slapping him on the bicep.

  “Leave the poor girl be, Peter, she's having a baby and doing the best she can.”

  *

  “Grayson-” someone started as soon as Lt. Baker moved out of earshot.

  Grayson silenced him with a hand.

  “You all know that I've done my best to protect and care for you all. I need you to understand that life on the outside is only going to get harder and harder as time goes on. Survivors will scavenge and loot and set traps. No one is planting acres of food to keep themselves going. Murder is going to start when the supply of canned food runs short, and Cannibalism shortly thereafter. You all will grow to be a part of the community we are going to build here. Part of that growing is going to be painful. In the military, like in civil society, there is a pecking order. General at the top, grunt at the bottom. It's the way it always has been, and likely the way it's always going to be. These people don't know us, they certainly don't trust us, but they are willing to share what they have, and in return all they ask is a little bit of effort on your part.”

  Grayson paused and eyed the people before him, as if daring them to protest further. Seeing no further argument come forth, he dropped the stern fatherly look into a genuine smile and spread his hands out in front of him.

  “In that case, welcome home! Sanctuary ladies and gentlemen! We have arrived. From the grounds of this humble base we will start the process of building a nation. From within its safe walls we will strike out and smash any undead we come across and take in what survivors haven't been corrupted by the devil. Great things ahead of us ladies and gentlemen, great things.”

  Grayson clapped his hands together loudly and walked briskly away. Mark watched him intently and thought he saw the smile on his face drop just a beat early, into one of disgust, or was it contempt? Amber's hand tugging him insistently back towards the tent broke his examination of the man.

  “What the fuck is going on, Mark?” Amber blurted out in a muted yell once they were inside the tent. “Ask permission to leave? Are we fucking prisoners now? Slave fucking labor for them?”

  “Amber-”

  “So he wants to rebuild society with a new class? Indentured servants?”

  “Amber-”

  “Do whatever the soldiers ask? What the fuck is that?”

  “Amber!”

  She quieted finally and looked at him, waiting for an intelligent response from the man whose entire life revolved around his brain. Instead Mark responded with:

  “What choice do we have?”

  Amber sat there for a long moment, her jaw hung open, amazed that Mark wasn't as outraged as she, that he had no solutions or compromises to put forth.

  The work was grueling and at times disgusting, but after a few weeks everyone settled into the new routine. There was a rape on the second night camped. One of the single women ended up behind the barracks with one of the soldiers after drinking a bit. Lt. Baker executed the soldier without so much as allowing a word of defense. The rapist's body burned at dawn along with the bodies of the infected that had staggered up to the fence over the course of the night. The summary execution of the soldier took the wind out of the sails of the soldiers excited by the sight of new people, women in particular. After the first few days, the rank and file grew tired of ordering people around for meaningless things and life seemed to start settling down into a new normal.

  Mark woke in the deep black of night, nearly a week after moving into the base, to hear the sounds of conversation drifting over from the front gates. After he shook the cobwebs from his head he concentrated on the low sounds that seemed to come and go depending on the wind.

  “Listen, we have morale to worry about here. That execution, as justified as it was, really pushed the limits here as far as the men are concerned,” a voice hissed. “I think we need to focus on something to lift their spirits.”

  “Shh!” Another man barked as the sounds of someone shifting and moving inside their tents drifted across the camp.

  “Have I given you reason to doubt my word? More people will come, more women. We'll get some booze too, like I promised, maybe some pot to chill out the testosterone a bit.”

  That voice Mark recognized immediately, it was Grayson's.

  “Well every woman that you've brought with you is either taken or too old. The men need to see the potential for a future if they are going to fight for one.”

  What the fuck does that mean? Mark thought. The men had since stopped talking and were working on building up and stoking the fire. Promised them booze and women? In that short sentence from Grayson, by detaching himself from the circumstances, Mark was able to rationalize some of what was spoken in terms of morale. The reality of his and Amber's plight didn't allow for such detachment however. He realized in that moment that his worst fears for Amber were extremely within the realm of possibility. The voices moved out of earshot, leaving Mark to ponder the significance of the conversation.

  Mark only noticed that the sky had grown a bit brighter when he was roused from his thoughts by the sounds of movement coming from the tents around theirs. One at first, someone coughing, followed by numerous other movements as people dragged themselves noisily to wakefulness to set about performing their morning chores. Mark was secretly happy when he was among those chosen to clear the fence-line that morning. He needed to be outside the fence. He needed to be outside what was now as much their prison as it was their haven.

  *

  As the door clicked closed behind Yen, Tar lay back on his pillow and turned his attention outward, to the landscape outside the window of his hospital room. He stared blankly at the muddy, barren earth and into the dense pine forest that blocked most of his view. It took him a few moments to recognize that he was looking out to the northwest. Past the heavy foliage that blotted his vision would be the junkyard, and beyond that, route 125 heading north out of Donner.

  From what Linda had told him, Yen and Nala had been doing a great job in his absence. Both he and Nala, strangers to the town, had stepped boldly and willingly into the role that he himself had never wanted, but grudgingly adopted. Good, he thought. Back to worrying about . . . his inner dialogue paused as he tried to think of what he had left to worry about. Nothing that mattered to him prior to the coming of the undead mattered to him anymore. His whole
world shifted focus with the end of the old. The things he believed in and thought represented him, now seemed callous and unrealistic. People could no longer survive without others, he was sure of that. Even if they could, surely they would lose touch with that which makes them human.

  He pushed the abstract thoughts from his head, recognizing there was no need to dwell on the inconsequential anymore. He thought briefly about his wife, and reassured himself that he was glad that she and their son, Karl, didn't live to see this hellish vision of Earth. He forced the thoughts from his head after a moment, when they turned dark, thinking of the past and all that was lost to him. His thoughts shifted briefly to brooding over the purpose of his own life at this point, crippled and nagged by pain.

  “Time to get up, old boy. No use lying about being miserable,” he spoke aloud to himself.

  He sighed heavily and sat up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. It was clear from the two days since he had awoken that downtime would not be his friend any more than it had been previously. His thoughts always seemed to turn dark ever since Harriet passed those few years back. He hooked his remaining foot through the arm of a chair and drew it back towards him. As he started lowering himself into it he heard the door handle turning behind him. Expecting Linda he was taken aback when Betty walked in.

  “Oh! You're up!” she chirped excitedly, a smile appearing on her lips.

  “Yes Ma'am. Looking to get out of here as soon as I can make it to the door.”

  “How is the pain?” she asked, her voice dripping with fake concern.

  “Not the best, not the worst either. I'll manage.”

  “Got a shot here if you want or need it.”

  Tar hid his grimace of pain by looking out the window as he settled his weight heavily into the chair.