by Brown, TW
Rounding the corner that allowed me to peer down a long dark hallway, I saw pictures hanging amidst the cobwebs that covered the walls and were in fuzzy clusters in the corners. I paused at the first picture and felt a tug on my heart.
A man with slicked back thinning hair smiled big; he wore a suit that looked a few decades out of style, including a wide, paisley tie. His wife outweighed him by half. Her orange, curly hair was almost clownish it was so bright. Her skin was milky white and splattered with an incredible amount of freckles. Her smile was of the tight-lipped variety and she clutched a child under each arm with a protective fierceness that only a mother could exude so visibly. The two children were sporting their mother’s orange, curly hair. The boy was maybe six—Thalia’s age—and the girl was ten or eleven. They had freckled faces and the girl’s smile showed a large gap where a tooth had yet to grow in.
Shaking off the sudden surge of melancholy, I stopped at the first door and opened it with slow caution. It was the boy’s room, the walls adorned with Transformer posters. However, there was one poster that made me pause and step in for a closer look.
“Well, I’ll be,” I sighed, a touch of appreciation made me feel kind of warm inside.
The poster was of a man riding a massive bull. The face of the man atop the raging beast was a younger version of the man in the family photo hanging in the hall. Grabbing a few things from the top of the dresser and stuffing them into my bag, I exited the room and shut the door.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Joshua hissed from the front door. The man had not stepped a foot inside. I was really struggling with the urge to dislike this guy.
“Just a few minutes,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. If he wanted to stand in the doorway the entire time, that was fine. Without waiting to hear a reply, I ducked into the next room.
“Jackpot!” I whispered a bit loudly. I moved about the room as quick as possible, stuffing my bag full of all sorts of things just lying about in the room obviously belonging to the daughter in the picture.
I made a sweep of the parent’s bedroom and pocketed a few more trinkets. All in all, I had not found anything particularly useful, but I had found a few treasures none the less.
“About time,” Joshua hissed as I stepped past the human doorstop and out onto the porch.
I spotted the herd a good distance away as they trudged along just waiting for something to redirect their course. I shot the man beside me a look that I imagine only hid most of the disgust I felt.
“Risking your life needlessly does not make you a hero,” Joshua said with an edge of hurt to his voice. I guess he had read my expression pretty well.
“I think we have different definitions of the word needless,” I retorted, patting my full pack.
“Can we just get on with whatever plan you have and return to the group?”
I stepped down off the porch and paused by the driveway. Reaching down, I picked up a stained and worn out baseball. Tossing it up and down a few times as I made my way a few yards back from the front façade of the house, I could not help but begin to whistle “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
Joshua ran to catch up, his eyes never leaving the not-too-distant herd of zombies moving across the horizon. Looking around, he picked up a golf ball-sized rock and joined me as I gave the house another look. I had walked in and created a mythology about the residents. That had all changed the moment that I saw the family photo hanging on the wall. This was a family. For all I knew, and based on the probable odds, they were all dead. Or at least dead-ish, I thought. However, now I saw the house in an entirely different light.
I could not really explain or fully understand it, but now I saw a house that would be forever haunted by the ghosts of laughter and bedtime stories. It was a house where the wife called the husband “Daddy” and he called her “Mama”. Funny thing, but for all I knew, the guy could have been a raging drunk who beat his wife and kids, but I was basing this new perspective on images that I had seen.
That made me realize just how conditioned I had become growing up. Everything had become nice, neat stereotypes. Everything was based on flimsy ideas, but if somebody wanted to escape the box of preconception, they had to struggle against the idea that I already had in my head.
“We gonna do this?” Joshua interrupted my unusually deep and definitely abnormally reflective thought process.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Joshua looked at me with confusion. I blew a deep breath out and tried to explain. “As soon as you told me that you had lasted this long without killing a zombie, and how you were unable to take one down…I judged you as less of a person. That wasn’t fair.”
Joshua was looking at me now like I’d grown a second head. Slowly, his expression softened and he smiled.
“Then I guess I owe you an apology as well.”
This should be good, I thought.
I never saw the blow that came to the back of my head. I was on my knees for some reason, and everything was blurry. Another blow came and I was face down in the grass.
“How are we going to explain this when we get back to town?” I heard Joshua’s voice, but it sounded like it was at the end of a long tunnel.
“Considering we will be coming back minus three other individuals, I would say it should be fairly easy to explain.”
It took me a second to remember who owned that second voice. Jessie.
“We just gonna leave him there?”
Funny, but Joshua actually sounded concerned. His next sentence cleared up any confusion.
“He ain’t dead yet. We can’t have him coming back.”
“Of course not.”
I heard the gunshot, but it was miles away. Funny, but the pain in my head had suddenly been replaced by a nasty wrench in my gut. This was not how I wanted to die.
***
“He’s coming to,” a voice that I did not recognize spoke.
I tried to open my eyes, but the light was too bright. When I went to shield my eyes and discovered that my wrists were cuffed to something, panic came in a flood. Of course that was amplified a great deal by the memory of my last moments of consciousness.
“Take it easy, son,” a man said in a voice that was like a male version of…
“Dr. Zahn?” I managed through dry, chapped lips.
“What did you say?” Now the man sounded almost as frantic as me. “Is she okay?”
Something about this guy’s voice was familiar; only slightly, but familiar in some way that I could not pin down. It was making my head hurt as I tried to force the memory to the surface that would reveal this person’s identity.
“Billy Haynes, right?” the man asked. And then it came to me.
“Grady?”
“He must be getting better if he can remember my name,” Grady said to whoever else was in the room. I had managed to open my eyes a little, but everything was still nothing more than blurry shadow.
“Water,” I croaked. If we were going to talk, I needed to wet my throat. Also, my lips felt as if they were splitting in a hundred places.
Somebody placed a cup against my lips. I started to drink, ignoring the pleas that I “take only small sips”. Screw that, I thought, my throat feels like it had been rubbed with heavy duty sandpaper and then braised with a blow torch.
Ten seconds later, I puked up everything I’d just gulped down. Now my throat was even worse, and I was soggy all down my chest.
“Get him another cup, maybe he will listen and just sip this one,” I heard Grady speak as I felt him stand and move away from me. “When he is awake and gets cleaned up, somebody come get me.”
I could now see faces. Grady had a look that I am sure he stole from Dr. Zahn. Nobody can manage that degree of disapproval to show in their face like that lady, but Grady was a close second. Maybe it is a “doctor thing”, I thought.
A woman stepped up beside me, and after a slight tug and the sound of metal on metal, my wrists were free. She di
sappeared from view as I felt the head of my bed start to raise me to a sitting position.
This time I took the proffered cup and sipped very slowly. I used that few minutes to look around. I was getting really tired of waking up in strange places. The room was non-descript and my bed was the only one in here. At least it wasn’t some sort of hospital ward or something.
“You feel up to talking?” Grady Jones asked as he pulled a stool up beside my bed.
“I guess.”
“Why not start with how it was that we showed up just as two people were bashing your head in. Had it not been for Big Paisano, they would have probably killed you…or worse, left you for that small herd of undead that were nearby.”
“Big Paisano?” What the hell was a Big Paisano?
I received my answer not more than a heartbeat later as a man walked in the room. He was a shade over six feet tall and had to turn slightly to enter through the doorframe since his shoulders were so damn wide. This man was more than just a little impressive, but he had the warmest, kindest smile that I think I’ve ever seen.
“They told me you were awake,” the man said. His voice was exactly the opposite of what you would expect from a man so large. It was soft; almost a whisper.
“And they were just telling me that I probably owe my life to you,” I replied.
Big Paisano stepped up beside my bed and patted my shoulder with a catcher’s mitt-sized hand and smiled with what looked like embarrassment. Holy crap, the guy was blushing like a school girl!
“I saw you take down all those zombies while that guy just watched. I was going to come help, but then I saw the woman sneaking around and I started following her. It wasn’t hard to figure out that you were being set up.”
It took me a few seconds to process everything. I guess the confusion was clear on my face.
“Why don’t you tell us what you can remember,” Grady said.
It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts, but at last I started talking. I began from where we had last seen each other when I’d been out on that mission with Dr. Zahn to find a child zombie for her to study and I told them everything up to when I’d been conked on the head.
I kept waiting for questions or some sort of interruption, but none came. Grady just nodded and made a face every so often, like when I told him about how Jake had basically led a suicide mission against the group where Dr. Zahn and the others were now living. I saw a few of the other people that had come to listen flash some looks of concern or, in a few cases, understanding, when I told them about the child zombie ambush that had happened at the wind farm place.
After I finished, I looked around the room. Everybody was just staring at me, and I was beginning to feel more than a little uncomfortable. A thought came and I forced it out of my mouth.
“What about the rest of the group I was with?”
“We let them go,” Grady said.
I started to speak, but he cut me off. “No, we never captured them or anything. What I mean is that we just did not make any attempt to stop them. It was a bit peculiar that none of them made any attempt to come investigate or look for the others.”
“They hung out for about two hours and then headed west, back towards La Grande,” Big Paisano added.
“So can I ask what you guys were doing out this way?” It did seem a bit strange that these people would be in just this spot at just this time.
Grady smiled. “You really don’t know Dr. Zahn very well.”
“What?”
“She sent word the night before you left,” Grady explained.
“How? That town is locked down pretty tight. I don’t see how anybody could get in or out—”
“Some older lady that I didn’t recognize. Carol…” he faltered as he struggled to try and remember.
“Carol Wills?” I said with disbelief.
Now I was really confused. Carol, or Granny Rambo as I often refer to her, was actually one of the citizens of the community we had just joined. How was she roped into running messages for Dr. Zahn? Not only that, but why would Dr. Zahn send one of the people from La Grande out to Grady? She had been very explicit about demanding nobody breathe a word of Grady and his group’s existence.
“Yes!” Grady exclaimed.
I had a lot of questions when I got back. Not to mention a few concerns. Had my inclusion on this run been a set up? I honestly did not think so. Graham had been pretty straight up with me and the others. Yet, there were still a lot of things that did not quite add up. There had been mention of not only Jake, but Jon as well, possibly being crooked or even part of Winters’ group. At the very least, it was implied that we had been led to La Grande under false pretense.
My head was starting to hurt. I needed to get back to the others.
“Dammit!” I cursed. In all the fuss, I had forgotten to ask a very important question.
“What is it, Billy?” Grady asked with obvious concern.
“How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” Big Paisano chuckled. “A few hours at the most.”
“I need to get back.” I tried to get out of bed and my head swam.
“And you will, but take it slow, kid.” Big Paisano kept me in place with one hand and no effort. “We can head out in an hour or so. You need to get your bearings. Plus, you have a pretty nasty concussion. You are going to feel like crap for a couple of days.”
“I’m not waiting a couple of days!” I began to protest. I started loud, but my voice got quiet in a hurry as the noise pounded inside my skull, causing me to end with more of a whimper than a roar.
Another thought formed. I guess I had simply taken it as a given, but I felt the need to ask. “What happened to Joshua and Jessie?”
“They have been…detained,” Grady said with almost no hesitation except for that last word where I could tell he was deciding just what exactly he should reveal to me.
“You mean they are here?” I tried once more to sit all the way up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. This time I took it slow and was far more successful.
“You don’t need to worry.” Big Paisano reached out a hand to help me stand. I took it with a weak but grateful smile. “We aren’t murderers. We will speak with Dr. Zahn before doing anything with them.”
I thought about asking to see them myself, but then I realized I didn’t have anything to say to either of them. I didn’t know why they felt the need to take me out, and I really did not care. I knew that I should, but I simply could not find that degree of anger within myself.
“Now, let’s get you something to eat and then send you home. I am certain the doc will be frantic with worry when you don’t show up with your group,” Grady said.
I could picture Dr. Zahn a lot of ways, but frantic was not one of them. I followed Grady up a narrow flight of stairs and discovered that I was in a small farm house. Looking out the huge picture window, I could see rolling hills with tall grass looking like green waves as a gentle breeze blew.
***
“I really appreciate you coming along with me,” I said to William Geddes, or, as he was better known, Big Paisano.
“No problem,” BP shrugged as he pulled the sword he wielded, a huge weapon that looked like it had to weigh fifty or sixty pounds, from where it had dug into the tree after cleaving through the head of the zombie he’d just killed.
BP (apparently only I called him that) was a pretty interesting guy with a fairly interesting story. He had been a singer in a barbershop quartet of all things. You would automatically assume that he was the deep voice, but you would be wrong. The guy was a tenor and could sing some stuff that I would only be able to hit if somebody kicked me in the crotch.
When all of this went down, he had been on the road doing a few shows in Vegas. He and the other three guys had driven down on Harleys. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the name of their group; the Birdland Bikers.
Anyways, they were in Vegas when the world fell apart. They had been scooped up and du
mped in a FEMA center with a few thousand other tourists and even some celebrities. The shelter fell two weeks later when some of those who were admitted ended up being infected; pretty standard stuff up to that point.
After that, things get a bit strange.
***
BP and one of the other guys from his quartet, Davey Poole, had made it out and ended up in the middle of the freaking desert. They were sitting on a rock, laughing about how funny it was that they would now both die from heat or thirst after escaping the zombie threat.
A low flying aircraft zoomed past at some point and then circled back. BP said that it rocked back and forth as it flew past the second time; obviously the pilot had spotted them and wanted them to know. About an hour later, a massive eight-wheeled ATV rolled up and a dozen military types jumped out. They took BP and Davey Poole back to their base. It just so happened that the base turned out to be the place known as Area 51.
According to BP, the place was really nothing more than a glorified landing strip with a bunch of empty warehouses and office buildings. The one good thing, in a manner of speaking, was that they had a huge communications grid. They were in touch with other installations all over the world for several weeks.
It was from there that Big Paisano watched the world die. They had one theater with over a thousand big screens that were showing live satellite feeds from around the country and at every single base the United States had around the world. There was another theater that ran streaming video from cameras mounted in places like Time’s Square and even Disneyland.
“The military wasn’t taking apart UFOs at Area 51, they were keeping tabs on the country. The entire place was overhauled just after 9/11 and turned into the most high-tech observation post in the world,” Big Paisano had explained. “They could type in a person’s name and then cameras all over the world would start a search. I actually saw the zombie formerly known as Prince,” he said with a chuckle.
BP said that everything was going fine until a herd of close to a million zombies just happened to come stumbling their way. People were given the choice of staying in the underground bunker complex or leaving. Most chose to stay, but BP said that he took that as an omen saying he needed to head home. He had watched his hometown of La Grande in that huge theater on more than one occasion as the citizens fought for their lives.
