by Jacy Morris
"Yeah, well, I'd still come out on top."
"I highly doubt it," Brown said. "You look like a bottom to me." Epps liked Brown. Along with Beacham, he was the only other brother in the entire group besides Beacham. That meant something to him, even though race was quickly becoming a moot point in the world.
"Top, bottom, I'm still gettin' mine." Whiteside shook his head, and Brown just laughed.
Whiteside picked up the cards and shuffled, bridging like a pro. He did this a few more cycles while Brown and Epps threw their peanuts into the middle of the piece of cardboard they were all sitting on. Whiteside dealt the cards with ease, and Epps pulled his hand to him. A four and an eight, boy, Lady Luck loved him tonight. Whiteside dealt three cards face-up in the middle of the cardboard. Nothing there excited him, but no one else seemed to have anything so they all called. It was the same for the turn.
Gregg joined their group, settling down into a cross-legged position with practiced ease. "Deal me in," he said.
"You can't just join in the middle of a hand," Brown said. "You gotta wait."
"Aw, come on. What's it matter?" Gregg asked.
"It's the principle, Gregg. There are rules. If you don't follow the rules you might as well be playin' Go Fish with your granny."
Gregg shook his head. He wasn't buying it, but Gregg never did. He was an ass of the highest order, but he was an alright guy. He was the type of guy that would be there when things went south, but if you wanted stellar conversation or deep philosophical shit, you were out of luck.
The next card Whiteside dealt put a gleam in Brown's eye, so Epps folded immediately, which was easy to do when all you were playing for was peanuts. He got a look at Gregg's face and asked, "What's wrong with you."
"Nothing."
Epps just nodded. He knew what was wrong. It was the same thing that was wrong with all of them. The world was dying, and so were they. "It'll get better," Epps said.
"When?" Gregg asked.
"When we down by that beach, boy!" Brown said.
Epps nodded in agreement.
"All mai tais and bikinis. You just wait and see," Brown continued.
Gregg shook his head. "I don't know, boys. I got a bad feeling I'm not gonna be around to see any of it."
Epps knew that feeling. He knew it well. "Nonsense. We're gonna wake up in the morning and get our asses out of here, and that's the truth. I'd bet my left nut on it."
Gregg just laughed along with the others. Existential crisis averted.
****
Andy listened to them all. No one spoke to him, not the soldiers, not Rudy and Amanda. He was all alone, even with people all around him. He had made it through like the rest of them! He had even killed several Annies! Yet, he was nothing but an afterthought to these people.
He just wanted to close his eyes and drift off into oblivion. Despite all of the day's hardships, and the relative peace they were enjoying, Andy still found it hard to sleep.
Something was wrong. He didn't know what. It was that same something that had made his life a living hell back home. He had it again. The depression. It was coming back, but he was powerless to stop it. This was supposed to be his new beginning, here on the other side of the country where no one knew about the things he had done to himself. This was supposed to be his fresh start. The end of the world was perfect for that.
Yet, the old problems were still there. He didn't know what it was about himself that turned people off, but he knew that there was something. He might as well have a sign tattooed on his head that said "loser." It were as if he gave off some sort of pheromone that made people reject him. They never rejected him outright. They just sort of... moved beyond him, in conversations and even distance.
Even now, he was so physically far away from anyone else that he doubted any of them even remembered he was there. He was a ghost among these men. It was so unfair. Oh, if his father could hear him now, whining about fairness like a giant child. He would just have to show them. If they weren't going to like him for who he was, then he would become someone else entirely. He would become the biggest badass in the group.
He was already on his way. He felt stronger, more capable, every day. If only they could see that. His bitterness crawled over him like ants, and he curled into a ball, resisting the urge to scratch at his skin. Even the fat guy had someone that liked him. What did he have? Nothing, that's what. Tears rolled down the side of his face, but he dare not sob. He didn't want the others to see, especially not Tejada.
He would fall asleep soon. Any minute now. At least, that's what he thought. But the night rolled away, taking him along with it. He thought he might have slept a few times, but he couldn't be sure. Andy woke before everyone else. He sat up and rubbed at his red eyes, readying himself for the day, the weight of exhaustion still upon him. When he had eaten and packed, he laid back down and closed his eyes, waiting for the day to begin.
Tejada was the first to awaken. Andy knew he was awake when he lit the stub of a candle. The light cut through the darkness of the store room, and he opened his eyes to see the offending source. Tejada was sitting up, his back against the wall. He twirled the remains of a cigar in his hands, looking thoughtful. He looked like a goddamned classical painting, swathed in shadows, his temples flexing, the veins on his forearm popping out as he flexed his left arm. He looked tired. This painting should be titled "The Weight of the World" because that's what Tejada looked like he was carrying at that moment.
From around the store room, there was more movement as the others began to rise. Andy rose as soon as someone else moved. In the future, he would be the first to rise, for that was a small battle from which he could win respect.
****
Tejada's night had been long, his sleep fitful. He felt guilty that he had fallen asleep so quickly. But that was how it always was when he lost a soldier. The death of a squadmate took something out of him every time. Yesterday, they had lost two people, and when everything had been secure, he had gone down like a sack of turnips.
Kazinsky, Ramirez... they were getting light on people. They would be missed. He wanted the time to mourn them properly. He wanted to see them buried and given the respect that they deserved, the old flag on the coffin, bawling mother and father, maybe even a wife, guns firing in the air. They deserved the works. Instead, all they got was a spot on the concrete where the vultures could peck at their eyes.
What a failure he had been. He was as ill-prepared for this world as everyone else. The only difference was he had to pretend like he wasn't. That was his cross to bear. His dreams were now a play-by-play of the people he had lost. He hadn't seen Kazinsky and Ramirez in his dreams that night, they were too fresh, their loss too new. It wouldn't be for a while that those losses would turn into deep scars, and those scars would become visible every night that he closed his eyes.
He was fighting a war of attrition. They had a goal, but each step forward cost them another life it seemed, and there simply weren't enough of them for that to be a winning war.
But sitting around eating potted meat and crackers wasn't going to get them there. It was time to move. He gave the order to pack up, and everyone hopped into action. He paid them little attention, ignored their conversations. He didn't need to put his fingers on their necks to know their pulse. They were cold. They were dejected. They needed a win or morale would slip even more. And when morale slipped, bad things happened. Soldiers became locked in their own heads, feeding their energy into the flames of their own thoughts. In this way, they became lazy, and when they became lazy, death inevitably followed.
They needed a big win.
They lined up at the sliding metal door of the loading docks. Day and Quigs lifted it up, and it rattled on its tracks, sending a shiver up Tejada's spine.
"Shit ," Beacham said, backing away from the door.
Ramirez stood there, his arm gone, his skin almost blue from the loss of blood. Yet he still shuffled back and forth, only his head visible above
the smooth concrete of the loading docks.
"I got this," Gregg said, reversing his rifle for the purpose of smashing Ramirez's head in.
"Use a bullet," Tejada said. "He's worth it." And there it was, the ultimate measure of respect for death. Ramirez was worth a bullet. Putting Ramirez to rest was worth giving away their position to the Annies.
Gregg took aim, making sure to get it just right. He pulled the trigger, and Ramirez sank onto the concrete below the loading docks.
"Let's move out," Tejada said. In his mind, Tejada could already picture them, the dead moving, walking slowly towards the gunshot in the distance. They were like the ripples of a pond going in reverse, the circles getting smaller and smaller, the gunshot acting as the stone in the water.
They each hopped down from the loading dock, except for Rudy who lay on his prominent belly and slid his legs over. As they passed Ramirez's body, most of the soldiers avoided looking at him. Tejada didn't. He gave that brave bastard a full glare, and in his head, he silently thanked the man for his service.
****
They continued down Burnside Street, which at some unspoken point turned into Barnes Road, and despite the dead that lingered in the streets, Amanda was glad to be out of the grocery store. It was a fine place, defensible, with plenty of food, and several escape routes, but she had spent enough time in dark places with no windows, huddling in the shadows, and waiting for the dead to find them.
She was much happier out in the open, looking the dead right in their eyes. Even this curly-haired mom, in the ridiculous cat sweater that was stumbling up to her now... even she was superior to the imagined dead that Amanda dreamed up in her mind whenever she was stuck inside.
She turned sideways, brushing past the curly-haired mom, just out of arm's reach. When she was past, Amanda spun around, keeping her eye on the dead thing. You never knew when one of the dead would find a sudden burst of energy. She had seen it happen, multiple times before.
They were in the middle of the street, flowing around cars the way water flowed around rocks in a stream, when they heard something that made all of them stop in their tracks.
"Was that an elephant?" Rudy asked.
"I don't know what else makes that noise," Epps said.
They waited silently, hoping that the creature that had made the noise would erupt from the side of the road at any moment. They couldn't have said why it was important to them, but to a man, and to a woman, it seemed like the most important thing in the world at that time. In their heads, they willed it as much as they had willed the world to return to normal when they lay down at night. They filled their hearts with the hope that something majestic still lived in the world, something other than the wandering dead and the wild dogs that now roamed the street.
But it did not come...
"Maybe it's hiding," Quigs said.
Then there was a flurry of noise as a giant form came thundering out of the trees. It was a hundred yards ahead of them in the middle of the road. But even then, they could see the blood gleaming red on the creature's tusks. As it pounded up an unobstructed stretch of road, it lowered its head at one of the dead, pitch-forked it through the middle and flung it up into the air. It landed on its face, and the giant grey beast brought one thick foreleg down on the creature's skull crushing it and spraying brains all over the road like a kid hopping on a milk carton during recess. This brought a cheer from the soldiers and even Andy. Then, the elephant was gone, as if it had never existed.
When it had disappeared into the woods, Amanda found that she was holding hands with Rudy, and when she looked at him, she felt something weird in the pit of her stomach.
"It was beautiful, wasn't it?"
Yeah," Rudy answered back, but Amanda didn't think he was talking about the elephant.
Chapter 8: The Compound in the Woods
When Joan awoke, pain shocked her mind. She didn't know where she was, when she was, or even who she was. She tried to sit up, but it wasn't happening. The thought that she was paralyzed shot through her mind, and then she remembered why being paralyzed would be a bad thing, and then she began to thrash in her bedding only to find that the reason she couldn't move wasn't that she was paralyzed; it was that she was tied down.
Ropes strangled her wrists and ankles, and she moved her head from side to side, struggling to escape. At any moment, one of the dead could come in here, but where was here?
She remembered hanging on the side of the mountain. She remembered hearing the gunshot. Then there was an explosion, and she had been falling. She had stuck her hands out against the coarse clay and rock on the side of the ravine in the hopes that this would slow her fall, but all this had done was take the skin off her fingers and the palms of her hands. Then her boot hit an outcropping rock, and she went tumbling head over heels. Her world had become a blur of blue sky and red clay. Then her head hit the side of the ravine, and that was the last thing that she remembered.
Around her, she saw faux-wood paneling. There was a window to her left; a yellowed-curtain let in dozy sunlight. The bed she lay upon took up most of the room, and the interior felt cheap and sparse. It definitely had the feel of a trailer. She remembered that feel from when she had been little and her parents had gone to visit their "family friend." Joan had stayed in the living room while they had disappeared to the back part of the trailer. Soon after, coughing was followed by a funny smell that Joan would recognize years later at her one and only high school party.
She doubted Clara would have let them tie her up like this, unless... Joan strained to see her body, to see if she had been bitten while unconscious. Her hands were bandaged. Was that because she had scraped the skin off them? She tried to wiggle her fingers. They all moved. She lifted her head up to look at her feet, but they were covered by a blanket. She could feel the ropes around her ankles. Her back burned with fire as she squirmed.
Outside, she heard voices. They echoed through the thin walls of the trailer, and then she heard a rickety door squeal open. It slammed shut like an airplane lavatory door. A man entered the room and stood there. He smiled at her, the way few men had ever smiled at her before.
"You're awake."
Joan felt like a deer frozen in headlights. She didn't know what to do. Fight or flight, both options had been stolen from her by those damnable ropes. Now all she could do was nature's third most successful tactic, sit completely still and hope that the predator overlooked the prey.
"Are you going to talk?"
Should she? What did this gain her? If she was in trouble, being silent might just bring her more trouble. "Why am I tied up?"
The man had a thick brown beard on his face. It was wild, hair sticking up from the sides and all over the place. "I thought you might ask that." He smiled reassuringly, as if her being tied up was nothing out of the ordinary. "We found you at the bottom of the ravine. Didn't know if you were alive or dead, and, just in case you died, we wanted to be safe. Can't have you walking around eating on my friends and family." He laughed then, and Joan sensed his falseness. Working in an E.R. had finely honed her ability to detect bullshit. The smile the man wore now was like the smile she would see on the faces of abused spouses. "Oh, I fell down the stairs," they would say, sporting the same grin that the man in front of her wore now.
"My brother says he saw you fall down the ravine. You're lucky to be alive."
Weren't they all?
"He thinks you shouldn't be alive. But here you are, a miracle of sorts."
The conversation stalled, and the man with the brown beard sat there smiling at her. "Can you untie me now?" Joan asked.
"Oh, of course, of course." The man came to her and leaned over her, his hands sliding up the length of her arms in a familiar manner. He smelled... clean. She was surprised how long it had taken her to name the smell. She had become so used to the specific scents of her friends on the road, that the scent of clean simply hadn't registered. It wasn't a lack of scent, but a different scent, and a wave of n
ostalgia for her shower washed over her.
The man finished untying her wrists, and she brought her arms to her side. They were numb, and her shoulders ached from sleeping with her arms over her head for so long. She tried to massage some blood back into her hands, but the bandages on her fingers got in the way, and now that the blood was beginning to return, so was the pain of her fall.
She tried to sit up, but it was impossible. Her abdomen was on fire, and she knew that she had likely bruised her ribs. The bearded man pulled the blanket back, and she saw the horror of her leg. It was bruised and swollen looking like a dark, marbled blue cheese. It had quite obviously been broken. A makeshift splint was secured with strips of cloth, and Joan began to understand just how bad of a situation she was in. She was immobilized in the world of the dead and stuck with a group of people that she knew nothing about.
"What's your name?" she asked the bearded man as he untied her feet, not that she would be going anywhere with a broken leg.
"Name's Chad," he said.
Joan just nodded her head, noticing that for the first time her head felt swimmy. "And you?" he asked.
"Joan," she said. It was nice to be able to introduce herself to someone new. She didn't know how many more opportunities she would get to do that.
"Joan," the man repeated. "What were you doing out there, Joan?"
"We were trying to get to the coast."
"We?"
Shit. "Yeah, I was traveling with some others, but they probably left me for dead. I would have."
Chad just nodded. But Joan sensed something not quite right with him.
"Alright," he said. "I'm just going to leave you to rest. I'll have someone bring you some food. You're probably starving."
"That would be awesome."
"Very well then." Chad nodded at her and then exited the trailer. She heard the clank of metal on metal after the door closed behind him. She was locked in, not that she could go anywhere with her leg busted up. She lay back on her bed, trying to figure out just how much trouble she was in.
