by Brown, TW
“No.” I shook my head.
“One of ‘em has a crush on Steve,” Melissa chuckled.
“Bigger than the one you have?” Ian joined the conversation.
“You’re all crazy!” Lee shook his head.
“What about Dave?” Ian asked.
That sobered me up quick. I slid my gun into its holster, no longer concerned about Lee. If it came down to it, he wouldn’t make it to the window. “Dave didn’t make it.” I walked over to where Jack’s body lay sprawled in a puddle of blood, half in and half out of the doorway. “Somebody give me a hand here.” I grabbed Jack’s wrists.
Billy and Ian both started forward, but Ian shot the young man a glance and he stopped. Grabbing the feet, Ian and I carried Jack up the dark hallway. We laid him down on the dirty, tiled floor of a tiny bathroom and shut the door.
“So,” I leaned against the door, “what happened to Joseph?”
“He went down under a swarm of those things.” Ian reached in his back pocket and pulled out a small bottle. He unscrewed the cap and the bitter smell of whiskey hit me. He took a big gulp and handed me the bottle before continuing. “Whoever the bastards were that hit us…knew we were coming. My guess is that they’d been watching us for a bit. I’m guessing they herded every zombie they could find into the buildings lining one street and just waited for us to go in. They had trailers of ‘em, too, backed into the end of the block while we were inside a two-story building. They rigged it with speakers and had somebody calling for help.”
“What the hell did they want?” I asked.
“The weapons?” Ian shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. They fire-bombed every vehicle, so it wasn’t that. Maybe intel. You said Serenity is gone.”
“Yep.”
“Well they did grab somebody, but I didn’t see who. I was up to my ass in hungry zombies. To be honest, I didn’t hook up with Billy until the third day, and I almost killed him. He was crawling along this ditch and I was up in a tree. I had him in my sights when he pops his head up to look around. That’s when I saw his face, or he’d be dead.
“But you saw Joseph go under?”
“Ten feet from me. So…yeah, I saw,” Ian’s voice shook. “He was looking me in the eyes when one of those things was tearing out the side of his throat. I could see his mouth moving, and then blood started gushing from it when he tried to scream. I wanted to shoot him…put him down…out of his misery. But I couldn’t. I was down to my hand-to-hand weapons. There wasn’t time to re-load.”
“You said they grabbed one of our guys?” I tried to help change the subject.
“Yeah, but I don’t know who,” Ian said with a heavy sigh. I could tell he was still thinking about Joseph. It made me feel like a real first-class prick, putting him through this; not really even letting him enjoy the reunion. “I saw a guy in fatigues shoved through a door to one of the shops on the street.”
“Could it have been Jack Simpson?”
“Steve, I honestly don’t know,” Ian’s voice was straining a bit now.
“Okay.” I waited a moment and then told him what we’d found, Simpson cuffed to a vehicle, the single bite.
“Fits with some of the sick shit I’ve seen out here,” Ian’s voice was quiet and I heard the exhaustion.
“Look,” I clasped his shoulder, “I know things are a little different, but I’d like you with us. You and Billy.”
“It wasn’t ever a question,” Ian said with a shrug. “I’m glad somebody is willing to take charge. It wasn’t gonna be me… ain’t my style.”
“So, in a few hours, still well before sunrise, I want to zip through this place. Do a snatch and grab,” I explained. “You up for it?”
“If it means being back with the old gang in a couple days, you bet.” Ian said with a renewed enthusiasm. “And, I gotta admit…I missed hearing your little girl laugh. I was married once, and the thing I looked forward to most was having kids.”
“You were married?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t work out.” I heard something in Ian’s voice that indicated that he was done talking about that subject.
“Let’s get back in with the others,” I suggested. “Oh yeah, help me keep an eye on Lee.”
“Not a problem.”
We walked back into the small room. Melissa and Billy were in a corner whispering…and laughing! Of course, Lee was sitting against the far wall with a big scowl on his face.
“Welcome back, you two.” Melissa pushed away from the wall and came to wrap her arms around my waist.
“Everybody get some rest,” I announced. “We’re gonna allow for things to settle down. In a few hours we’ll see about doing a run-through of this place. Then, it’s back to camp.”
Within moments everybody downed some water and Ian shared some foil-wrapped power bars. Personally, I don’t know how those fitness-nuts did it. That thing tasted like spoiled chalk. I took watch and slipped back to the room where we’d climbed in through the window.
Staying back in the shadows, I watched them. On a few occasions, I heard one. I wondered if they understood each other. I mean, animals communicate, and those things used to be people. It’s probably just the slight dehydration and hunger talking …and the fatigue.
I don’t know.
***
After a few hours, I went and woke everybody. I don’t know if anything was said in my absence, but Lee seemed a bit more docile. I’m not gonna argue or complain if it lets us get through the rest of this without losing anybody else.
“Melissa is with me, Billy and Ian are with Lee,” I said as I went through my ritual pat-down and weapons check. “Try to grab food with the thought that we have to haul this through the woods all the way back to camp.”
“And water?” Billy asked.
“Everybody should fill anything you’re carrying, but be sure to get enough for a couple days. We’re all responsible for carrying our own water. Grab all you want, but you’re toting it.”
“The important thing is to mark a building for the next run. An ‘X’ means nothing good, an ‘O’ means there are salvageable supplies inside.”
“What’s to stop somebody from coming along and taking advantage of our work?” Lee asked.
“Not a thing,” I replied. “But even if somebody does come along, hopefully they won’t clean out everything.”
I was more than a little surprised when that answer seemed to satisfy. More so, that there weren’t any other questions.
Once we reached the window, I stopped the group again. I pointed out which direction for Ian’s team to go and then motioned to the raised highway that sat on twenty-foot high concrete pillars. That is where we would meet. With that, I climbed through the window. Once Melissa was through, we moved off towards a newer looking manufactured home.
I sat my pack down beside the Cyclone fence that closed off a fairly large yard. The property ran all the way down to the lake, and there was even a small dock. I imagined the residents’ children or grandchildren fishing off that dock, or jumping into the lake, splashing around and laughing. Not for the first time, I wondered if the world would ever approach a point where such things would be possible again. The image of Thalia running and playing chase with the kids at Serenity on the big play-structure flashed in my mind.
“Steve,” Melissa hissed.
“Huh?” I shook my head. I needed to stay focused on what we were doing or I’d get us both killed. “Sorry…just thinking.”
“About Thalia?”
“How’d you know?”
“You get a look…a very certain look when it comes to her,” Melissa said with a smile...I wondered if she knew how pretty she is in the moonlight.
“Just wondering what sort of world she’s gonna grow up in.”
“Well, how ‘bout we just worry about getting in and out of this place without losing anybody else,” Melissa said, placing a hand on my arm.
“Good point,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
I stood and w
ent over the fence. When I turned to help Melissa, she was gone. I looked around. She was several feet to my left. I could see her shake her head. Then…she opened the gate—much more quietly than I’d just been—and walked through.
Just a bit humbled, I followed her to the cinderblock steps that led up to the dark, quiet, canned home. (That’s what my grandma called them when I used to visit her in Florida every other summer as a kid. We’d drive past the trailer parks and she’d cluck her tongue and say, “Stevie, don’t you ever go buyin’ into one of them canned houses. No matter how pretty they make that label look, it’s still just a long can.”)
The door had one of those spoked, half-circle windows at the top, but the glass was frosted. Lotta good that did when you wanted to get a look at who was on your porch. I tried the knob, but it was locked.
“Let’s circle around, try all the windows,” I whispered.
We moved through an overgrown flowerbed and systematically tried each window. Melissa made a small sound to let me know she’d found one. We couldn’t see in through the drawn curtains, so, after opening the window, I stood back and used my machete to slowly pull the curtains apart. Still too dark. But at least nothing had lurched out at us…yet.
“I’ll go first,” I whispered, and hauled myself up and in. For a moment, I became very aware of how vulnerable I was to a zombie attack—half-in, half-out, my upper body dangling over the windowsill as my legs flopped on the outside. Very ungracefully, I tumbled in, my foot catching on the curtains. The entire left side tore free from the hooks and, just that quick, I was tangled in thick, dusty, blue material…unable to see a damned thing.
“Hold still,” a voice whispered. I froze, and smiled sheepishly when the curtains were pulled off my face and I could see the shadowy outline of Melissa’s head.
Once we got me free of the curtains, we moved to the closed door. I felt confident that we’d find no zombies. After all, I’d rung the helpless-stupid-survivor dinner bell and none bothered to show, right? The door opened to a long hallway. I could see the outlines of several picture frames hanging neatly on the walls. That was another sign. A zombie woulda bumped up against or brushed them. More than likely they’d be on the floor; at the least, they’d be all cockeyed.
“This place is empty,” Melissa stated my sentiments.
There were two doors across the hall, one directly, the other to our left. Might as well be methodical. I went to the door across the hall and paused. I could smell something. It wasn’t zombie…I opened the door and the smell intensified. Not zombie, but—
“Suicide.” Melissa elbowed past. When had she gotten so bold?
On the bed, covered up to their necks were two figures. Several plastic prescription bottles were scattered about both nightstands. Plastic bags covered both heads.
“Very Hale-Bopp,” I said, following her into the room. Carefully, I flung the bedspread over the heads. A bathroom door was to the left, and we both went in after opening the curtains of the bedroom so we could see better.
“Just empty the medicine cabinet into this bag,” I said, handing a folded-up gym bag to Melissa. “I’ll go check the kitchen.”
“Okay.”
I slipped back out into the hall and made my way towards the large, open living room. I had to step up and cut through a raised dining room. Canned home or not, I had to admit that this place did look kinda nice.
I didn’t bother with the refrigerator. Instead, I began opening cupboards. Some held dishware, but others were a bonanza of canned goods; fruits, vegetables, soup. On one shelf, I was thrilled to discover several boxes of Mac ‘n Cheese. The good stuff…in the blue box!
I went to the front door, opening it slowly. It was quiet, nothing moving. I jogged out, grabbed the two packs and returned inside. We had a good load out in a hurry. I pulled out the can of spray-paint and made an ‘X’ on the door.
“From here on, we search and mark,” I said. “If you find something really special…go ahead and grab it, but let’s get this place marked and get the hell out.”
Just before dawn, the five of us were on the highway looking down into the dead town. A few zombies could be seen stumbling along, but it looked like we’d actually drawn a majority of them out. That would be a tactic worth remembering.
“Let’s go home,” I said, shouldering my pack and heading towards the grassy slope that would lead us up to the relative safety of the woods.
***
The trip was quiet, uneventful, and surprisingly fast. We reached the campground the next evening. Jamie was on watch in a covered stand they’d built atop the building. We were about a quarter of the way across the open field when the door to the place I hoped we’d be calling home for awhile flew open.
Thalia and Emily tugged impatiently at Teresa and Randi, urging them to hurry as they led the welcoming party. Then Aaron saw Billy. He broke past the group, sprinting down the hill, and even at this distance, I heard him laughing.
It was, for the most part, a very happy reunion. The loss of Jack seemed overlooked for the time being. All of us live in a world where we have to focus on the good, because the bad is simply unavoidable.
I actually felt a tinge of jealousy when Thalia broke from my hug and ran squealing to Ian, babbling about her teddy bear, Dillon. That was the first I’d heard that it had a name.
We walked up to the house. I was pleased to see that considerable progress had been made on our moat in my absence. I waited for Lee to start up, but he stayed quiet. In fact, he and I were the only two not really doing any talking.
Once inside, Barry disappeared and Jamie came scrambling down the ladder they’d nailed to the wall and the ruckus kicked up once more. I found a chair and dropped all my gear beside it. It was nice to see everybody smiling, and there would be plenty of time to mourn the loss of Jack. I wanted out of my boots and to sleep in my bed. Who cares if the only difference between that and the one I’d been using the past five days was that one was inside and the other was outside.
“Steve?” Emily’s voice made me look up.
“Hey, kiddo.” I smiled. My smile faded. There was something in her eyes.
“Did you see any sign of my daddy?”
Crap.
“C’mere, Emily,” I said, patting my knee.
She walked over and climbed up into my lap. Her head leaned against my chest and she folded her hands neatly under her chin. Was she praying? Oh, please don’t let her be praying that I’m going to tell her that I’ve seen, or even have the slightest thread of hope that her dad—or anyone else from Serenity—is still alive.
“Emily,” I struggled with the degree of honesty to put in this statement, “your daddy is a very smart, brave man. I haven’t seen him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there. And if he is, I’m certain he’ll find us. Find you.”
She was quiet for a few minutes, and I began to wonder if she was waiting for me to say more. Problem is, I didn’t have anything else.
“If you go out and find my daddy and he’s a zombie-monster?” Emily paused and looked up at me. “You’ll shoot him so he won’t eat any people, right? My daddy wouldn’t want to eat people, and I know if he is a zombie-monster, he’d be sad about eating people.”
I was stunned.
“I promise, Emily,” I said and kissed the little girl on her forehead.
“Thank you,” she said, and after a quick hug, she climbed down and ran back out to where all the happy conversation and laughter bounced off the walls.
I was suddenly very tired. I just wanted to close my eyes for a second.
***
“Steve,” Dr. Zahn’s voice sliced into my consciousness.
I sat up in a hurry and every part of my body protested. My neck felt like it was on fire. Sun filtered through the windows and I was still in the same chair. Couldn’t somebody have woke me up so I coulda slept in my bed…which was empty. Where the hell was Melissa?
“Steve!” Dr. Zahn’s voice grew insistent.
“What, Francis?” I glanced up at her, wincing again at the slightest movement of my head atop my neck.
“Company!”
“Living or dead?” I was awake now.
“Living.”
“How many?” I groaned as I bent to pull on my dirty socks. Disgusting, I thought. They were stiff, and I could definitely smell them.
“Eight,” Dr. Zahn said, but there was something else in her voice.
“And?” I let the word hang. The doctor wasn’t the type to play games, I’m certain that if there was something that needed to be said, she’d—
“Three are bitten,”
“Great,” I sighed, and followed her out. The sun was already promising a real scorcher.
Standing in a group next to a large circle of gravel around the two barren flagpoles were the new arrivals. The first thing I noticed with no small sense of relief was that there weren’t any children. This was going to be hard enough. Three women, five men. One of the women had a nasty scratch on her left arm that was puffy and swollen. One of the men had his right hand wrapped up in dirty rags, and another had his right arm in a sling.
“Hi, folks.” I stepped out from under the overhang and down the couple of steps. All eyes turned my way. Teresa was holding one of the M4s, but had it pointed at the ground. Aaron was standing like some backwoods sheriff, hand on the grip of one of the pistols hanging from his hips. “Who’s in charge?”
“I guess that’d be me.” The man wearing the sling stepped forward. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just trying to find a place away from the roads. I used to come here when I was a kid and it seemed like a good possibility.”
“Looks like you ran into some trouble,” I said, nodding to his arm.
“We’d been staying at the Whitman orchard. It was off the roads…seemed like an excellent choice. Made a run to La Grande when one of ours got sick. Made it in, hit a hospital without any casualties.” I heard a justifiable measure of pride in his voice. “Musta picked up a tail close to the Whitman place, because the morning after we got back…they were outside.”
