by Brown, TW
Juan pulled the hatch shut with a solid thud as the sounds of breaking wood could be heard from above. He climbed down until he felt the solid dirt floor under his feet. In the pitch black, he felt around until his hands discovered a wall.
Making his way along it, he angled himself towards the sounds of sniffing and muffled crying. At last, he found the cot where his girls sat huddled together. They both shook and shivered.
Juan pulled them close and held them as the sounds of crashing could be heard from above. Dust drifted down and he could taste it in the back of his throat. His eyelids fluttered involuntarily as the grit found his blind eyes. Closing them, Juan pulled a fur blanket from the cot and slung it up and over their heads.
They sat in the blackness for what seemed like an eternity as the sounds of feet trudging around could be more felt than heard. At some point, there was a tremendous crash and Juan feared that the roof would collapse and seal them in a horrible grave where they would finally draw their last breaths before joining Mackenzie.
He had no idea how long they had been sitting on that cot. At some point, the girls had actually fallen asleep and their soft snores were the only sound.
The only sound! His brain was finally able to get that message to register. Still, Juan sat in the darkness and did not dare move. He might have stayed that way for hours or minutes; he had no way of knowing in the void.
Eventually, he eased the girls from his side and laid them down beside one another on the cot. It took him a while to grope about until he discovered the rungs built into the wall. Climbing slowly, Juan made his way up until he found the handle of the trap door. Turning the knob, he pushed and was given another fright as it did not budge!
He pushed to no avail. After many failed attempts, Juan stopped. He was drenched in sweat and felt dizzy.
Had this become their grave after all? he wondered.
“No,” Juan growled. “Not like this. Not after everything.”
Taking another step up the ladder, Juan braced his shoulder against the hatch. He pushed, straining to the point where he began to feel the pain in his injured leg. Blocking it out, he renewed his push and felt the slightest give. Calling on everything that remained, Juan pushed up and felt the door give with agonizing slowness.
Then it flung open so abruptly that he had to fight not to fall. The cool air rushed in and the sky above seemed so bright that it hurt his eyes.
***
“My God,” Vix breathed.
She relaxed enough so that her body would slide back down the embankment. She, Paddy, and the others had been on the move since before sunrise. For over two weeks they had done nothing but observe. Dolph and his wanna-be Nazis numbered over a thousand. Yet it was clear that only one person gave orders. It was history repeating itself.
It did not seem possible that one person could be responsible for so much destruction. Yet, down below was a testament. Of course, this man Dolph had found a way to utilize the zombies as his own private army.
He did so by grabbing a few of the undead (over a hundred if what Vix had heard or seen was any indication) and then fitting them with backpack-sized devices that made an incredible racket. From what they could tell, he obviously had quite a few in reserve. If he needed to re-direct the horde, he would simply move to a location and release one. Once he activated the pack, he used prisoners to lure the zombies wherever he wanted them to go.
“Looks like your little island did not fare well,” Paddy whispered.
When Vix had seen for herself that New England had fallen, she went numb. It had simply been a matter of the bodies building up to the point where the fallen made a ramp for those who still moved. The zombies had washed over the walls like a tidal wave of undeath.
Using binoculars, she had scanned for any signs of life and come up empty. She heard Chaaya weeping and glanced over at the woman. Losing her lover had hardly elicited a response; yet, here she was now, crying and near hysterics.
“Shut her up,” Gable hissed.
Seamus moved over next to the woman and his low rumbling whisper came almost like the buzz of a bumblebee. Chaaya’s sobs receded to hiccupping gasps, but at least she had quieted down. Vix looked down the line at the others. She saw the same look on their faces that she felt: defeat.
It had seemed so grand as they all sat around the campfire and tossed out the different ways they would stop this maniac. Yet, every day was more of the same. They would look upon the destruction created by the army as they would happen upon some encampment or another…and do nothing.
Now they were where the River Medway met the Channel. The Isle of Sheppy was lost. New England was gone. A decade of rebuilding wiped out in days. Hundreds of the living torn apart or joining the ranks of the undead.
“Bugger this!” Vix spat.
She started to get up and felt a hand yank her back down. “Stay put,” Paddy whispered.
“What was the point of all this?” Vix argued.
“Point?” Paddy almost laughed, but the look on the woman’s face made him pull it back. He knew well enough how her temper could flare and did not wish to add any fuel to it at the moment. “There stopped being a point to things when the first dead body sat up and took a bite out of the closest living person it could find. It is not about points, lassie. It is about staying alive.”
“What happened to stopping this army?”
“It is not as easy as just wishing it to be so. We are only able to act within our own limitations. That madman has gathered followers in numbers that we can’t hope to stand against.”
“How many of them are doing so willingly?” Vix insisted.
They had gotten close two days ago when Dolph’s mob rolled into a small, walled village. They hit fast and were scaling the walls before the alarm had even been sounded. By the time the people of that little hamlet managed to mobilize, it was past too late.
Vix and the others had watched as several of the citizens were either hung or exposed to the bite of a zombie and tossed into a cage on wheels that reminded Vix of the old circus train cars from the black and white films she watched with her husband back in what seemed like another lifetime. That cage held the supply of zombies fitted with the noise packs. After everything of value was stripped, people were apparently given the choice of joining or death. Not surprisingly, many joined.
“I would guess that at least half that army is there by choice,” Seamus muttered as he scooted close.
“That means that half of them are not,” Vix pointed out.
“So what do you suggest?” Gable did not hide the dubious tone in his voice. “We just slip in and organize a revolt?”
“We either do something or we abandon this madness,” Vix finally snapped. “What is the point in simply following this army around the countryside and watching him conquer England?”
“There is no more England,” Algernon broke his silence. “There hasn’t been for years. No Spain, no Germany, no France.”
“Thank God,” Vix muttered, earning a chuckle from Paddy.
“I think I have an idea.”
Everybody turned. It was not often that Randi spoke out loud. She could manage a whisper, but to speak out loud appeared to cause her pain due to all her facial damage.
“Well?” Paddy finally urged.
Gable moved close to Randi and listened as she whispered in his ear. He nodded and then faced the group.
“Instead of following and trying to seek out a weakness to exploit, perhaps we take a page out of the playbook of our Vix.” Gable leaned in again. “We return to London and take the palace.”
“Why would we want to do something like that?” Paddy asked.
“That wanker couldn’t have possibly rooted out every single survivor in the kingdom. I say we beat him at his own game. We move back to the heart of the country and gather anybody we can along the way. We build our own bloody army and prepare for the grand assault. It is a story that has been repeated through history, and if I am judgin
g this Dolph person correctly, he may be even more delusional than Adolph.”
The group had retreated from the hill and was making their way into some nearby woods as Gable recited this last bit. Vix was nodding, Paddy and Seamus were strangely stone-faced, and Algernon was pinching his lower lip like he always did when in deep thought.
“I say we either do that or it is time to cross the Channel and abandon hope.” Vix came to a stop just after they had all ducked under the branches and entered the copse of trees. “Perhaps we put it to a vote?”
They returned to camp and met with the rest of their little thirty-seven person army. Gable recited Randi’s idea once more for the entire group. More than once somebody groaned or grumbled about the futility of the plan. A few brought up how the previous attempts by other groups to try and retake London had all ended poorly.
“That was before Dolph did us the favor of leading the zombies away like the Pied Piper,” Algernon pointed out.
“Have we not experienced enough war and death?” Mike finally rose from the stump he’d been using as a chair up to this point.
Mike Sellars was not what most people pictured when it came to the leader of a group. He was average height, average weight, and soft spoken to the point where you often had to lean close to hear him. His left hand was missing and the limb capped with a hook that would make a pirate envious.
He’d lost the hand early on when his fellow survivors had made a terrible and eventually fatal mistake. He’d been bitten and one of them had insisted on amputating the hand in hopes that it might save him from turning. That had been before the knowledge of immunity spread and became better known by the survivors.
“If we run now, then we will do so again and again. That crazed and delusional man wiped out a settlement…one of the largest in existence I would be willing to wager,” Vix spoke, standing as her emotions surged. “Men, women, and children who had managed to rebuild their life and start something wonderful and new.”
“Using that same logic,” Mike countered, “if we fight, will we simply continue to wage war every single time somebody we don’t like pops up? Ideological differences are a reality. We might not agree, but—”
“That’s rubbish and you know it!” Vix snapped. “This is not about ideological differences. This is about some delusional twat who wasn’t breast fed long enough and now fancies himself as some sort of leader who can rule any way he sees fit. It would be splendid if everybody could simply live and let live, but human beings always find a way to muck up the pudding.”
“Muck up the pudding?” Paddy snorted. Vix shot him a nasty glare and he made a gesture of locking his lips and tossing away the key.
“All in favor?” Gable said with a shrug.
Everybody raised their hands after a brief pause during which Paddy appeared to be warring with his decision. Once it was settled, they returned to their own camp and packed up everything. An hour later, the group was headed west to London.
Each day passed with a surprising lack of the undead until Algernon reminded them that it had seemed like most of them were part of that massive mob that had taken out Vix and Chaaya’s old home.
By the second day, they were doubting their decision as they had yet to encounter a single living person either. It was late in the morning part of the group’s hike when one of them spied a curl of smoke that melded with the gray sky full of low hanging clouds that had kept up a steady misting since just after they had broken camp.
The group angled their direction towards that sign of life. It proved to be farther than they had originally thought as it seemed that the landscape was a continuous sea of rolling hills that could not be avoided.
It took until just before dusk—a condition hastened by the blanket of dark clouds that were now dumping buckets of water on the group—but at last, the palisades of the settlement came into view. As was the custom when they approached an unknown settlement, the group held back and sent only a small envoy detachment.
Randi, Gable, and Vix were chosen for this encounter. Vix was more than a little surprised. After all, she and Chaaya were the newest additions. Paddy had pulled her aside to tell her of the decision and its reason.
“You believe in this. Most of us are still on the fence. If we want to recruit others, then we need to send in the people who truly believe that this is the right course of action.
That was good enough for Vix. And so, as a series of lanterns were lit up on the distant wall, whether simply to ward off the night, or to signal the arrival of her and the others, Vix marched towards the massive and gated entrance of this settlement.
For the first time in a while, she felt like a hero in one of her stories. She was about to try and spearhead a campaign against a force of evil that had reared up in the zombie apocalypse. She only wished she had a flair for words so that she might jot it down for future generations.
Easy, old girl, she thought. It has not yet even begun…much less ended with a positive outcome.
***
Chad moved through the house with a smile on his face. They had been in the same place now for several months. His daughter seemed happy, and the two of them were getting along better than ever. Today was a shining example of that as she would be showing up any time now for their little vacation excursion.
Just the thought of it made him laugh. Here it was, over a decade since the zombie apocalypse had jumped out of mainstream fiction and wiped out most of humanity, and he was planning a vacation!
After they’d taken that first one, his relationship with his daughter had grown and become so much deeper. Of course he had scored even more points when he had assured his daughter that this trip would still be just the two of them.
He’d recently begun seeing a woman named Monica Wu. It was getting serious, but the woman had been very understanding about this trip just being Chad and his daughter. Ronni was still getting to know Monica and had not yet become entirely comfortable with the situation.
“Dad?” a voice called from the tiny living room of his one-bedroom apartment. “Are you almost ready?”
Chad stuck his head out of the bedroom. The look on his daughter’s face was absolutely priceless.
He’d learned that she used to love the old Tweety Bird cartoons. Monica had an amazing knack when it came to knitting. In fact, her job was in the garment complex. Last night, she had handed him a box.
“Just a little going away present,” she said with her shy smile, a lock of her hair drifting down over her eyes as she stared down at her lap and waited for him to open it.
The box had contained a knit cap made to look like the yellow cartoon bird. Chad had jumped up and hurried to the bathroom to try it on. It was exactly like he remembered the cartoon figure to have looked back in the day. That cap was now pulled down on his head as he peeked out at his daughter.
“My God!” Ronni laughed and shook her head. “That is so…yellow.”
“Do you have all your gear? It is gonna be cold where we are going,” Chad said, accepting his daughter in his arms as she gave him her customary hug in greeting.
“Yes, Dad,” she said with a huff that was the same one he’d heard from her as a teen.
He gave her a look from head to toe as he held her out at arm’s length. Her sandy blond hair was beginning to darken as the summer gave way to fall and winter. It was cut just below her shoulders; long for the norm considering most people had become accustomed to keeping their hair short in order to avoid allowing the zombies anything they might be able to grab hold. Her brown eyes sparkled and he saw just a hint of her mother’s mischievous gleam in them. Her lips curved in a slight smile and she tilted her head to the side.
“What?” his daughter asked with an arched eyebrow.
“It is just so hard to believe that Daddy’s little girl is a grown up young woman,” Chad said with a sigh.
“Daddy’s little girl?” Ronni chuckled. “You haven’t called me that in forever.”
Chad nodded.
“That is because you are so dang grown up. I guess I didn’t think you’d want me calling you that anymore.”
Ronni renewed her hug of her dad and then looked up at him with a softness in her smile that was rare. “I’ll always be your little girl, Daddy. Isn’t that what you used to tell me?”
Chad kissed her forehead and enjoyed the moment of closeness for just another few heartbeats before stepping back and picking up his backpack. They had a long couple of days to hike up into the woods. The sun was going to be coming up soon and they needed to use every bit of daylight they could if they were going to make it to their destination as planned.
“Yeah,” Chad agreed to his daughter’s earlier comment. “It just feels so strange sometimes now that you are so old.”
That earned him a kick in the rear end and an indignant huff. “Old?”
“Didn’t you always say that anybody over age twenty-five was old…and once you hit thirty, you are ancient?”
“That was when I was a teenager.”
“And now that you are about to turn thirty yourself…thirty isn’t looking so old anymore is it?” Chad laughed.
“No, but fifty-five is like dinosaur age.” Now it was Ronni’s turn to laugh.
The two shouldered their gear and headed outside into the early morning chill. Their breath turned to vapor and was snatched away by the breeze. It certainly felt cold enough for snow, but the light drizzle indicated otherwise.
They reached the main gate and checked out with the sentry. The young man found their names on the list and made a few notes. He gave a whistle.
“Heading up into the mountains…nice. I hear the snowboarding is epic right about now. In fact, some folks returned the day before yesterday and said there was a pretty gnarly base and that there was fresh powder almost every day.” The sentry looked up and gave Ronni a wink. “Watch out for the old-timer. A few of the slopes are way nastier than they look from the top.”
