by RM Hamrick
The unmistakable “Rawnrerr” of a zombie and the grunts of a human echoed through the forest. The human sounded like he was struggling. Audra deftly maneuvered downhill to the source of the noises. Her scent was upwind, but Audra would have been surprised if anyone noticed. They were busy.
Audra could mind her own business, but if the human failed, there would be two zombies to check out and cash in. And even if he did not, Audra wanted to know who was so close to her campsite. It was probably that idiot trying to kidnap Randy from her. Audra already felt annoyed, and she had not even met him yet.
She got to the bottom of the hill and there he was, big-green-pack guy. He had a stick in one hand, stabbing at the zombie, putting holes in the merchandise. In the other, he had a brand new, shiny reader. Any safe distance he gained with the stick thwarted his ability to retrieve a DNA sample.
The zombie was much more decomposed than her Randy and getting worse by the minute. The big-green-pack guy continued to yell, causing the zombie to flail about and further the damage. He did not know he was within arm’s reach of a woman standing behind him.
“Wow, this looks hard,” she said in an amused voice, announcing her presence.
The big-green-pack guy swung around in surprise. His brown curly hair cut short on his head, his eyes wide like a deer’s. No longer held back by the stick, the zombie wasted no time. Its feet left the ground as it lunged for the curly hair. The full weight of the zombie hit the guy’s pack, and he fell forward with a panicked yell. Audra rolled her eyes and sidestepped the disaster. Her boot met the zombie’s ribcage to roll him off the pack. The pack was bloodied by the holes the tagger had poked into the zom’s body, but otherwise had protected its human underneath.
The human stumbled forward and away. His wide eyes darted between her and the zombie who was struggling to get up from its back like a turtle. Audra remained unimpressed. She ate more berries from her hand.
“Well,” she said, “tie him up.”
The tagger, still in an attack posture, had fear in his eyes. He looked like he might run away. His eyes searched for an escape into the forest.
“It’s your zom. Tag him,” she said again to encourage.
He gave her one more look, trying to read her, then straightened his posture and removed his pack. He was much taller than Audra, but his demeanor yielded to hers. He pulled out duct tape, an expensive supply, and tore off a big strip. He slunk around Audra toward the zombie's head. He attempted to cover the zombie’s mouth but did not find the subject cooperative. It opened its mouth so that the tape was not wide enough. It rolled left and right. He managed to get the top lip, but the jaw opened and closed on the edge of the tape. At least the top teeth were covered. He took another piece of tape and did the same to the bottom. Feeling more comfortable, he pushed the jaw closed and employed more tape, but almost got his eyes clawed out. Maybe he forgot it had arms? Another piece of tape tied up the wrists. It was a tedious affair, and Audra watched with both amusement and impatience. Pack guy sat down next to the zombie and took a break, trying to slow his heart rate and catch his breath. Audra considered leaving once more out of boredom.
He finally rolled to his hands and knees to search the ground for the biometric reader lost in the frenzy. He sighed in relief when he found it in one piece.
This guy was a dummy.
The reader let out a long, low-tone “boop”. Audra already knew what it meant.
Name: Andrew Smith
Gender: Male
DOB: 12/1/2056
Status: No inquiries
“Damn,” he said, collapsing back onto the ground, too tired to stand.
“Did you expect to get something for him?” she asked, still trying to figure this guy out.
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, I don’t mean to help my competition… but look at this guy! He’s wearing farmer clothes - his family was poor before the outbreak. They are still poor. He looks like he was ugly, before, ya know, he got uglier. No one is missing this guy. You picked a bad one and wasted your time.”
Pack guy looked at his ugly, poor zombie covered in tape, and sighed.
“Damn,” he said again.
CHAPTER TWO
“All you have to do is scrape this part along the skin…” she recalled from her orientation. The short lecture and demonstration on the reader; the note to secure their hands and mouth with no explanation of how; none of it seemed like training as she stood horrified, staring down a quick and nimble zom in the overgrown field. The little girl lurched forward, almost trying to get Audra to pick a direction like she enjoyed the chase. Audra responded with a high-pitched yip and a backward jump. She tripped. With the girl at her heels, she pulled herself up with a flurry of feet and curse words.
Audra had been running from zombies for a long time now, but she had never teased one with a reader before. She stole a glance behind. The girl, just six or seven years old, was running like a crazed, murderous maniac. She was hungry, and she was not about to let her prey escape. Audra dashed into the woods hoping to navigate branches and roots more efficiently than her chaser. The girl tore through without a care, earning deep gashes on her face and arms. A thick branch lodged in her chest did nothing to stop her.
Their speeds were matched, but not their stamina. Audra’s lungs ached and her left calf twinged with every undetermined number of steps. With adrenaline flowing, she realized her previous survival successes had been contingent upon not purposefully inciting trouble. She caught sight of a clearing. She forced a deep inhale and went for it. Maybe she could sprint away and gain some distance.
She got ten feet into the field before she realized her mistake.
Twenty zombies sprinkled the forty yards of field. Twenty. It must have been a camp that got overrun. Audra veered left, but it was too late. Ten had seen her, and the rest would follow their lead. Several cut her off, and the girl was on her ankles. Panic set in. She kept away from zombies for this damn reason. Who the hell did she think she was to chase zoms? This was how she died, she was sure of it. She ran toward a pine. And while it was a bad idea, it was the only idea she had. She shimmied up the tree, gaining vertical distance from her zoms. She climbed high and caught her breath as she assessed her situation.
There were no low branches for the zombies to pull on. She was twenty feet off the ground with twenty surrounding the tree. Her pack? She’d left it in the first field. To be more agile against the girl, she thought. Now she was stuck up a tree with no pack, no help, and no hope, just a dagger and a useless biometric reader. Audra resisted the urge to throw the reader into the field. It was more trouble than what it was worth. Instead, she sucked in all the air she could, then sipped in some more. She turned her face to the blue sky and let out an angry outburst against the tall pine branches above her, against a fate that had brought her here - alive up to this point, for no reason at all. The noise only sent the birds in the tree flying off and made the zombies below her spike in energy.
* * *
“You were trying to poach my zom yesterday, dude,” she said with a head tilt, trying to read him.
He felt like fresh blood, new to the tagging game. But, he might also be a good actor, trying to get Audra to let her guard down. The zombie he had damaged did not appear valuable, and his pack had kept him protected when he turned. This guy could be playing her.
Instead of answering, he continued to look ruefully at his prize.
“You think if I can take the tape off, I can use some of it again?” he asked half to himself.
Audra let a smirk escape. He was good, but she would not let him change the subject.
“Yesterday?” she asked, confronting him again.
“Poach? I don’t even know what that is. I thought you were in trouble. I didn’t realize there were…” he hesitated, “girls… out here, tagging and stuff. I thought…” he trailed off.
“Poaching is taking someone’s zombie they’ve targeted, stalked, and positioned. It
’s a jerk move. So the question is, are you a jerk?”
“No, I’m Wilfred,” he said.
“I’m not calling you that,” Audra said. “It’s the damn apocalypse. No one remembers your name, you can pick a new one. And yes, there are girls out here,” choosing his diminutive term. “We don’t have enough people to be picky about genitalia.”
“Ok, I’m Dwyn?” he asked.
Audra responded with a furrowed brow and a confused look. A guy that would flip and change his name was someone worth suspicion.
He continued, “You seem to know what you’re doing… will you teach me?”
He then reached for something in his pack on the ground. Audra’s hand covered the handle of her knife. He resurfaced with a grain bar purchasable in the village. When he looked up, he was surprised that he had put her on the defensive. He offered her the bar. Audra let it fall to the ground but took her hand off the blade. Audra still had trouble believing he was dangerous. He scrambled for it with unnecessary motion like a teenager still growing into his limbs. He stuck it back out to her again with a smile on his face. His clean and straight teeth revealed a history of safe shelter for most of the outbreak.
Still refusing to acknowledge the food, she countered, “Who are you out here trying to find?”
“I’m just out here to help.”
It was as rehearsed and as awful as his Wilfred name. If he did not want to tell her that was fine. So far, he seemed too optimistic and idealistic to be out here. Everyone had their secrets. Dwyn could have his for now. Whatever his end game, Audra figured she could handle him. A short partnership to carry out more complicated tags might just be what her ledger at Lysent needed. Afterward, she could ditch him and be that much closer.
“I get all your zombies during training,” she said, seeing how he would react.
“Deal.”
“You tag along, help when I need you, and then leave when you’ve had enough,” she spouted.
“Deal,” he said with increased energy.
“Touch me or my stuff and I kill you.”
Her eyes narrowed and her face turned sharp with dark shadows that the sun could not erase.
“Yeah, no problem. Want a grain bar?”
Audra rolled her eyes as she turned back to camp. Randy needed to be checked.
“What about Andrew here?”
“You tag him,” she called out over her shoulder.
“Will you show me how?”
What had she gotten herself into? She mustered the patience she imagined she would need for weeks to come, spun on her heel, and returned to Dwyn. After they tagged his zombie with a fresh number, she showed him how to type it into his reader. They untied his feet and did their best to remove the tape from his face without removing flesh.
“Maybe duct tape isn’t the best way to go…” he concluded as he crumpled the wasted tape and flesh into a ball.
Turns out there was a lot Dwyn didn’t know, including reliable ways to build a fire. Audra taught him the basics. She had nothing else to do. He was excited to be sitting next to a warm fire that evening, which kept away the bugs that plagued them most hours. They would wait on Randy’s negotiations and tag more zoms in the morning. For now, it was quiet and the night undisturbed.
Audra wouldn’t admit out loud that it was nice to have company for a change, but the evening was pleasant as they lounged luxuriously against a log by the fire. Audra looked up at the sky. Satellite 867, as she called it, was flying by. She and Belinda often had dreamed of escaping off this earth to what remained in the sky.
“Audra?”
She came back from space, her eyes dropping to the fire.
“Yeah, dude?”
“How cool would it be to have marshmallows?”
* * *
“We have reached a pivotal point in our lives, in our history, in our evolution.”
The train had brought people in from the nearby towns to hear the important announcement. It was rumored that Lysent had figured out something monumental, maybe even how to fix the electric generators which had been down since the initial outbreak. They were doing well in the towns, keeping clean water and clean people with hard, daily work. A way to store power to run water purifiers and keep the lights on would mean a leap in their redevelopment.
While Lysent promised to improve community infrastructure for all, they still found the time to clean the front of their tall, white building and to replace the extravagantly sized glass windows in the front. Sandwiched between two uniformed guards, a small, regal woman spoke to the crowd from behind her podium. Her gray hair slicked back into a bun. Her eyes sharp.
“We confirmed this advancement several months ago, but much thought was needed to implement it in the world in which we live. While we hope this will not always be the case, it is the only way to use this advancement AND maintain our current level of living. No one wants to struggle like we have before…
“We have a cure.”
The crowd broke out in incredible noise. The pause written into the speech was much extended as people shared skepticism, celebration, even screams of terror. Some cried for their dead loved ones who would never be cured. They shouted questions to the speaker, disregarding the probability that if they were quiet, they would learn more information from the rest of the speech.
The lady was Larange Greenly. She had taken over, or perhaps had always been in charge of Lysent - at least this region. She was the one who had announced that the train system was now functional and would run its route to deliver mail and goods to the townships. She was the one who had announced that the rations for the townships had increased, decreased, then increased again. Greenly raised a hand and lowered it to signal she wanted to continue, then waited. The two hundred people quieted.
“All the townships have been sent letters to this same effect. We already know the infected are not dead. We know this because we have seen that the infected can die - sometimes of natural causes. They are sick with a virus that can be eradicated from the body. Once given a series of injections we’ve developed, the body returns to its normal oxygenation levels and higher brain function comes out of dormancy. The body regenerates only to the degree that the human ever could. Missing limbs will not grow back. Skin grafts may be possible in select cases.
“At this point, I would like to note, we will not be able to wake up everybody immediately.
“We barely have enough resources in the town as it is. We cannot have the entire population at our doorstep demanding food, water, and shelter. Many of those people out there are not your family. You do not know them.”
Even before the speech’s end, the crowd polarized in sounds of dissent and praise. Some were unhappy with the rations and space available now. They did not want others. A few were already encouraging an obligation that everyone should be awakened whatever their connection or lack thereof.
It was clear where Lysent stood.
“They do not know any better remaining how they are. And, to that effect, I’d like to explain the policy that has been put in place, balancing bringing back our loved ones into our lives, and not toppling us into famine and despair.
“You will be able to list the loved ones you are searching for who you would like cured and placed into your household. I would like to stress this first point. The people you list, if found, will be in your household and you will be financially responsible for them. You will have to care for them as they heal and transition into our new world. They will live with you. Do not wake up all the people in your old suburb. Wake up your daughter. Wake up your partner.
“Secondly, once the person is found, we will wake them up for a negotiated fee. This will demonstrate that you have the means to care for your loved ones. You will not create burdens on our society. Instead, you will help your returned ones grow in health, wealth, and contribution. This will effectively limit how many people you can wake up. Also to note, this fee does not include any medical bills for skin grafts, rehabilitation,
or hospitalization.
“We are currently not taking any collaterals or payment plans. Our first phase will be cash only. After the first phase, we will match our new consensus data with projected crops. We will analyze the population data and determine if more can be cured. We will then consider other payment options.
“The only payment option that will be in effect besides cash will be a work-for-awaken plan in which a dedicated worker may be able to earn enough cash to awaken their loved one. This worker would be out in the field, finding others’ loved ones who are incapable of finding them themselves. It would be dangerous work, but generously rewarded by having a loved one awakened when otherwise it would be financially infeasible.”
Audra refused to live within the fences of the town, instead just entering to trade. But today she clung onto the fence, just within listening range. This was her answer and her mind reeled with the possibilities.
* * *
Dwyn, who seemed thankful that he was not “Wilfred,” learned quickly. Audra first helped him whittle down his pack weight since he couldn’t run any decent speed with it on. She removed over half of his belongings much to Dwyn’s balking. She put it in another bag and hid it in the brush.
“We can come back in two weeks and you can get anything you want from it,” she encouraged.
After two weeks he didn’t even want to go look inside the bag. Audra was right.
And while she thought she would use him as bait for a couple two-person zombies and then send him on his way, he was showing promise as a partner. She taught him the basic strategies: Bait & Switch, Loop-de-loop, and Space Jam. They then moved onto more advanced two-person strategies like Leap Frog. Despite tagging nearly a dozen zombies, they didn’t find anyone of worth.
They had been out there for three weeks, waiting on Randy’s negotiations, but they finally had an answer. Audra considered the length of negotiation with a grim smile. Maybe the family did not have enough money. They were scrambling for more and trying to negotiate a lower price. But another likely scenario was that the family was rich and yes, they wanted to wake up Randy and a few other relatives, but they were not expecting to pay that much for Randy. It was amazing how many people did things out of obligation to someone that only knows “eat humans” on a daily basis. That would come out in the negotiation when they needed to put a price on their “loved” one. Most of the negotiation was the personal journey of the healthy person. A bunch of bullshit.
