by Brown, TW
Yesterday, one of her scouts returned and reported that blue banners had been spotted. She had slapped herself in the forehead with her palm when she looked on a map and determined the direction led straight to the Longaberger Golf Course. This little tidbit of information had put her on a higher state of alert. There was the possibility that this group might be better prepared and actually led by somebody who knew what they were doing.
When the next round of scouts returned to report that a military vehicle had been spotted, Major Wanda Beers actually considered cancelling the run. She decided to risk one scout who would attempt to get inside the wall and observe.
Four agonizing days passed, and her people were starting to run low on supplies—keeping a hundred and thirty-five people fed was no easy task these days—when the scout returned. Yes, they were very well fortified against the walking dead, but there were no signs of soldiers anywhere. In two days of observation, the only people seen coming and going besides Paul James and his useless daughter were a couple of young females and one male who was often seen using a set of crutches.
The sun was just coming up…somewhere. Here, it was a solid blanket of dark clouds that threatened snow. They stopped at the front entrance to the country club. There were several vehicles in place as a barricade. No sense adding to the chaos by allowing the possibility of zombies to come in during their assault.
Major Beers sent her men and women over the wall. Like any commander worth a damn, she climbed over with the first wave. All the concern turned out to be for nothing. Besides her Trojan horse, all they discovered were three young females between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, one male with a severe leg injury that looked to have received expert attention, and a severely disturbed black girl with Down’s syndrome.
3
Hunker Down
“…and we hope that some way, somehow, Jamie found peace in the end.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue.
What I wanted to do was scream. I wanted to cry. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury. Every face seems to be numbed with grief and looking to me for something. I just wish that I knew what the blazes that could be.
“We will miss Jamie Blossington, and we will never forget him. Rest in peace, friend.”
I looked over to Billy in case he wanted to say anything. He was simply staring at the pyre with the same empty look that everybody else had plastered on their wind-chapped faces. A quick glance told me that nobody else was going to step forward. I truly believe that we have all had about as much as we could handle if we managed to live a dozen lifetimes.
I touched the torch to the base and stepped back as the flames began to devour everything. There would be little more than a pile of ash and bone in a few hours. Once the fire burned out, everything would be shoveled into a cart and taken to a burial site. A small monument was being fashioned by Melissa, Thalia, and Emily, and would be placed next to Teresa’s in our little graveyard.
One by one, everybody walked away until it was just me and Billy and Dr. Zahn. And that was my newest problem. Of all the people I’d met since this nightmare began, Dr. Francis Zahn was probably one of the most hard-nosed, nothing-can-bother-me person I’d ever met or would ever meet for the rest of my life. That woman had vanished in the past few days. She was replaced by a frail, feeble old lady, who looked like she might crumble in on herself at any minute.
The past several days had been her undoing. It started with Teresa’s death. Teresa, the teenaged GI Jane of the group—and pregnant with Jamie’s child—had come down with the zombie virus or whatever it was. The problem being, that she’d not been bitten or scratched by a zombie. The eventual answer to the mystery: sexually transmitted.
Jamie had been bitten several weeks earlier during a skirmish with a mob. The saving grace had been that he was one of the few who showed immunity to being turned. However, we had eventually discovered that, immune or not, once the virus is in your system, it remains there. A person who displays immunity will still turn if they die from other causes. Nobody made that connection until Teresa came down with the virus for no apparent reason. Dr. Zahn blamed herself for the girl’s death…and now it seemed she chose to shoulder Jamie’s suicide as well.
“Billy…” I went to stand beside the young man.
And then there was one, I thought. Billy had joined up with me shortly after this whole thing began during a crazy escape from a FEMA shelter that was overwhelmed from the inside. He was with three other high school friends who had all fallen one by one.
“He just gave up on me,” Billy whispered.
“No,” I corrected. “He just gave up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And we probably never will.”
I stood in silence beside the young man. I just didn’t have any more words. The only thing that I was sure of at this very moment was that it was freezing, and I wanted to go inside. I glanced over at Dr. Zahn who stood shivering on the other side of the pyre. It was like being at the edge of the river while two friends were drowning. Which one do I jump in and save. I patted Billy on the shoulder and headed over to the doctor.
“Come on, Doc,” I said, and took her gently by the elbow.
She looked up at me with red, puffy eyes and tears streaming down her face. I truly thought I would never see this woman lose it like this over anything.
I took another look at Billy and hoped that he had the sense to eventually come in out of the weather. I’d made my selection so to speak and began guiding the doctor back to the huge, log cabin-style forestry building that we all called our home. In just the short time since we’d come out to send Jamie off to the heavens or wherever, the snow had already added a couple more inches.
The weather was not showing any signs of letting up, and the blanket of white that covered the ground was already past my knees. This area wasn’t too bad because we walked around enough to keep it tamped down. However, I seriously doubted that we would be leaving this camp very often anymore for anything except water. We had snowshoes and skis, but the weather was becoming so harsh that even suited up as warmly as we could, it was simply not a good idea to flirt with Mother Nature.
When I reached the long porch that ran the length of the front of the building, Jon Saunders was there waiting with Sunshine. Jon was and will probably always be a United States Marine, Sunshine is the kind of gal you imagine running around with flowers in her hair sticking daisies in the barrels of a soldier’s rifle. Lately, the two had become a secret couple. The only thing secret about it was that we all knew it before they did.
“We need to talk,” Jon said in lieu of a greeting.
“I don’t think I can take anything else right now,” I said with a sigh.
“I wish it could wait, but it really can’t,” Jon insisted.
“Fine.” I glanced at Dr. Zahn beside me. She seemed to be showing little more life than the walking dead. She stared straight ahead, tears still running down her cheeks made rosy by the wind and cold. I did notice that her lips were moving. It was as if she were talking to herself, but I didn’t hear so much as a peep.
“First, I am sorry as hell what you’ve been put through the past several days,” Jon apologized. “I am as big a part of the problem as anybody else. We all simply just got complacent…well…everybody but you. You need to know that you have all our support from here on out.”
I really didn’t care, but I let him continue because I could tell he was just building up to something.
“Also, I hate to be the one to add to what is already a huge burden on your shoulders, but Sunshine just finished a full inventory of the food pantry. We may not be as set up as we initially thought.”
“We weren’t really paying attention to a few of the things like flour, rice, and things of that nature,” Sunshine took over as she stepped out of the shadows. “Plus, I was not making notes on how much it took for each meal until recently. We have all been eating very well, but we are eating like people who can go
to the grocery store anytime we want.”
“So how bad is it?” I asked. I didn’t really want the answer, but since I’d been elected as the so-called leader of this group, I guess it fell on me to listen.
“We are good for at least the next six weeks.”
I let that sink in and tried to figure out what the problem might be. Six weeks was plenty of time to remedy the situation. I guess they anticipated my response.
“You haven’t ever lived out this way, have you?” Sunshine asked.
“Seattle born and raised,” I replied with a shrug.
“This is just the start of winter, Steve,” Sunshine said with a leading edge to her voice like she thought I might figure out whatever secret code she was apparently speaking.
I looked at her and then at Jon. “Look, I imagine you have a point, I’m just too burned out to pick up on it so spill it.”
“This is just the start of things.” Sunshine used her arms to gesture at the heavy snowfall coming down behind me. “Unlike what you might be used to in the city where this sort of weather clears up in a few days or a week, this will go on for weeks if not months.”
“That is why the porch to this place is eight or so feet off the ground,” Jon cut in. “And those tall posts along the road the lead to this place? Those are snow markers. This place could realistically see enough snow to reach the windows…or worse. Back in the day, they used plows to keep this place cleared. And that little Snowcat they have here is probably operational, but we don’t have any fuel for it. This whole thing kicked off in the spring. They had probably just put her away for the season and hadn’t gotten around to stocking up on fuel and such.”
“So what’s the bad news,” I sighed. I guess I really had not planned on having to hunker down for three or four months. Once again I doubted my ability to lead this bunch of people effectively.
“I want to make one more run,” Jon said. “I will take my boys with me and we will gas the cat up using the truck fuel. I already checked and that baby had a big forty gallon tank as well as a twenty gallon spare. We should be able to get to La Grande and Enterprise fueling as we go. This will be a food only supply run using the list that Sunshine has given me.”
“You want to go out in this and then try and deal with zombies…possibly raiders…and then get back here alive?” I just didn’t see the likelihood of anybody—not even a Marine and a pair of soldiers—making a run like this.
“I think we are the only ones who can do it,” Jon stated matter-of-factly. “We have the training to deal with extremes and will have the best chance if it comes to a living enemy. That is why it has to be us three despite your previous decision that foraging runs were not to be gender exclusive. This has got to be more of a military operation.”
Everything he said made perfect sense. My only problem with it was the fact that if, like they were both saying, the bad weather was just getting started, then I could be sending my three best fighters to their death.
“I don’t like the idea any more than you do, Steve,” Sunshine said with a hitch in her voice. “But if they don’t do this, we might all die of starvation.”
“How long before I should worry?” I asked.
“My best estimate puts us out for three weeks tops.”
“So we hit the halfway point on our stores before we know if we will be surviving the season?”
“You can still hunt for game in the area, but if you have noticed, it has been scarce. It has either migrated, or it has been chased away by the herds of undead that have come through,” Jon said.
“When do you intend to leave?”
“First thing in the morning, I already told Jake and Jesus to prep…I didn’t want to go outside your wishes, but I had to assume you would see the necessity.”
Jake Beebe and Jesus Sanchez were the two soldiers from the United States Army who showed up with Jon a couple months back. My relationship with them had been tenuous at best ever since they took Thalia and Emily—ages five and ten respectively—out into the woods and had them kill a walker. Yes, they had disabled it by taking its legs out, but I still had a problem with the whole thing. The worst part about that situation was that I was beginning to see where I was wrong. I was the one preaching vigilance and preparedness, but I was balking when it came to the girls.
“Just do your best to hurry back,” I sighed.
We stood in silence for a moment. I noticed the uncomfortable looks on their faces any time they so much as glanced Dr. Zahn’s way. She had been a rock for all of us. Nobody was comfortable with the shell of a woman she’d become almost overnight. With a nod, I led her inside and let the two “secret” lovebirds have a few moments of privacy.
Inside the giant visitor’s center cabin we called home, the mood was as expected. Even the two new arrivals, Doug and Cheryl Coates were in a corner leaning into each other for emotional support and they’d only been with us for a day.
As I peeled off my coat and gloves, my eyes sought Melissa and I found her with Thalia and Emily each snuggled under an arm with faces buried in her side. She saw me and her eyes immediately flashed to Dr. Zahn and then back to mine.
Dr. Zahn pulled away from me and went to her little emergency room/trauma center/office and shut the door. I felt something warm on my hand and looked down to see Buster, the red and white Border Collie licking tentatively. That was odd in the sense that the dog seemed to ignore me almost entirely. He was Thalia and Emily’s dog. Period.
I scratched the small dog behind the ear and was rewarded with a belly that was apparently a much more desirable location for the aforementioned scratching. Kneeling down, I gave the dog a good belly rub and remembered my beloved Basset Hound. Pluck had basically saved me that first night. For some reason, the emotions hit me like a firestorm and the next thing I knew, tears filled my eyes.
I don’t know if I stopped scratching Buster’s belly or if the dog was turned off by my pitiful crying, but at some point I found myself alone on my knees weeping like a baby. I looked up to find Thalia standing in front of me. She took my face in her tiny hands and stared into my eyes with a very serious expression of concern.
“It’s okay, daddy.” She placed her forehead against mine. “Jamie is in Heaven with Teresa and Emily’s daddy and my mommy.”
I was dumbstruck. This was just more proof that I was absolutely clueless when it came to the ability of children to process through absolutely debilitating emotional trauma and find happiness in a world that has fallen apart.
***
“Don’t take stupid chances,” I said as Jon climbed into the Snowcat with Jake and Jesus.
“And you need to take it easy on that leg,” Jon whispered. He glanced over my shoulder at Melissa. I appreciated his discretion. “You are starting to show a very noticeable limp. It is all over your face when you get tired or start to push yourself beyond what you should.”
“And if it looks bad, just come back and we will figure something out.” I ignored his ministrations.
“You know as well as I do that there isn’t anything to figure out. We need to do this. And next year we will have that full blown garden and we will hunt with a new purpose. We have to treat this like the pioneer days.”
I watched as the Snowcat roared down the hill and eventually vanished in the trees. Once it was gone I turned to get a look up in the crow’s nest. Fiona O’Hara was on watch.
“Fee,” I called.
“Yep…I know…keep an eye peeled for anything that might have been attracted by the noise.”
Everybody else had gone inside within the first few minutes; everybody except Melissa that is. Not even Thalia and Emily wanted to stay outside in this cold to play. It was bitter cold—and that was a phrase I really hadn’t appreciated until recently.
“You want to talk?” Melissa came and put her arms around me and snuggled in close.
“About?”
“Everything.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
>
“Dr. Zahn? The food situation? Jamie? There are a number of choices.” Melissa ticked them off one by one like charges in a courtroom.
“I don’t know what to say anymore,” I conceded.
“Steve, you need to give yourself a little slack. Every single thing that happens is not your fault any more than they are your accomplishments when something works. We are a unit.”
“But you all voted me your leader.”
“And when the tough choices need to be made, we will rely on your ability to think clearly and rationally.”
“But so much has gone wrong.” I felt that strangled feeling in the back of my throat again. Man, I was sick of crying or feeling like I was on the verge of it. I didn’t think men were supposed to get this way. They sure didn’t in any book or movie I could recall. Maybe this was what a nervous breakdown feels like. Did men have those? I wasn’t sure.
“And so much has gone right. You have two little girls that you have kept alive, we have this place—”
“And we may all starve and die here,” I cut her off.
“We will figure it out,” Melissa insisted.
I looked around at the smooth, white landscape. The curl of smoke rising from the chimney added to the idyllic look that this place gave off. That was the problem with an illusion; when it shattered, you were left holding nothing.
“Okay,” Melissa’s tone grew stern and serious and she spun me around to face her. “Have you confronted Dr. Zahn for her carelessness that resulted in Teresa’s and Jamie’s death?”
I stood there shocked. This woman and every single one of us probably owed our life to that poor lady. How could she even consider being so cruel? I tried to respond, but I was seriously pissed.
“You haven’t, have you?” Melissa pressed, and I shook my head because I could not find the words to express not only my anger, but also my disappointment in this woman who I thought I’d come to know. “And you won’t…because it is not. Her. Fault.”
