by Jack Wallen
“Josh, carry her back to the building where you found her. We’ll care for her as best we can. If we can get her through this, she might make a valuable member of our little Scooby gang. If not, well…no harm, no foul.”
Josh nodded at my request, scooped up the woman, and started off. While he went off to return the Princess of Jonestown to her hovel, I organized the retrieval of our provisions. Even from this side of the wall, we found no means to open the gate. Instead, we improvised a harness system to help bring over the heavier supplies.
There wasn’t much—especially in the way of food and water. When we finally had everything gathered together, it became clear what priority number one would be in the morning: locating food. Thankfully, New Salt Lake City was fairly large, so the possibility of landing rations was fairly high.
In the meantime, finding shelter was in order. Nights were already growing chilly and weather patterns had become even more unpredictable. So we went off, in search of our base camp.
Walking through the streets of New Salt Lake City was like walking through a dump. Everywhere you looked, debris was collected in piles. Every horizontal surface that hadn’t been kissed by the wind was still coated in the gray ash that had fallen after the initial blast from Godwin’s Fusion Generator.
And the smell. From every direction, your olfactory system was accosted by the stink of rot and death. The closer we were to the dead bodies, the louder the sounds of the flies and the crawling and writhing of maggots. Decay had wormed its way into the very fabric of life.
“What are the chances,” Jamal whispered to me, “of those flies being carriers of the virus?”
The question nearly punched the puke from my gut. There were certain rules I wanted the apocalypse to follow—it was only fair. First and foremost, the only way for the virus to transmit was through the bite of a zombie. Second—there was no such thing as zombie flies and maggots. Third—and this one was crucial—you could only die twice.
I stepped in to return Jamal’s whisper. “It’s possible. Mosquitoes can transfer diseases and viruses, so why not flies?”
“That’s not the answer I was hoping to hear.”
I grabbed Jamal’s hand and entwined our fingers. He gave me a light squeeze, which helped to ease a bit of the tension.
Jamal forced a smile. “Let’s table this discussion for another time.”
“What I want to know,” Morgan said, “is where are the zombies that attacked these people? Was the wall erected after the attack, or are they still here?”
Like a Bob Fosse chorus line, we all stopped, leaned, and looked around for signs of the undead.
“This is too creepy.” Echo shattered the heart-pounding moment.
I couldn’t argue with her sentiment.
A question bubbled up from the core of my mind. “How is it these bodies are still in the stages of putrefaction? And why are there still maggots? From the looks of the city decay, no one’s been here for a while, yet these bodies look like they’ve been dead for just a few weeks.”
“Maybe these people had the same idea as us.” Morgan stopped briefly in her tracks. “And maybe they discovered the only survivors within the wall were the undead. If that’s the case, maybe they cleared the way for us.”
After Josh had the junkie carefully tucked away, we sifted through the rubble and found the best possible choice to serve as our headquarters. The one-time church would be the ideal location for our needs. It was solid, all the doors were heavy and still functioned, and it had a full on kitchen. We immediately dumped our packs and bags to find somewhere comfortable enough to call a bed.
Morgan sat next to me on a front row pew. “Josh and I will take turns with the watch. You need to get some sleep.”
She heard not a peep of an argument from me.
Morgan started to stand from the pew; I reached for her and pulled her back down.
“Thank you, Morgan, for everything you’ve done. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”
She simply smiled, hugged me, and stood to leave.
Jamal smoothly took her place, and the look in his eyes was clear.
I nodded.
He curled up behind me.
“Hello, little spoon.”
I wiggled in as close as I could.
“Hello, big spoon.”
The night fell over us like a warm, comforting blanket.
chapter 14 | the mother lode
The bodies lay around me, a circling wall of death. Brick by brick, the corpses were piled carefully to isolate me from the outside world. I screamed, but the sound was forever muted by the cold, rigor’d meat. I tried to scale the human wall but the decayed flesh sloughed away, sending me back to the gore-soaked ground.
My only chance was to dig my way through the bodies. My fingers pulled at the dirty cannibal chow until it came away from bone like succulent beef.
I broke bone.
I unsealed intestinal walls.
The more I dug, the more there was to dig through. My fingers and arms were slick with the grease of humankind. Before I realized what was happening, I was hip-deep in a pool of human waste and remains.
And then I heard it—the sorrow-filled cry of a baby.
My baby.
Desperation fueled my resolve and I tore into the stack of flesh until a pinprick of light shone through. That was all the hope I needed.
“Jacob, I’m coming. Mommy’s coming, sweetheart. Don’t cry, honey.”
As the hole in the wall grew, so too did the wailing.
With the opening large enough, I squeezed through the fetid tunnel and dropped out of the other side.
When my feet hit the ground, everything changed. I was now inside a surgical theatre. Before me were two stainless steel tables. On the left table was my baby, sleeping soundly, his thumb tucked gently between his lips. On the right table was a man, his face covered with bandages. Between the two was a clear, plastic IV tube—each end attached to an arm. Within the tube, oxygen-rich blood flowed in a one-way direction from Jacob to the stranger.
Another man, clad in a surgical gown and gas mask, stepped up to baby Jacob.
“No!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”
The man ignored me and pulled a chart from the table. After a few shakes of his head, he gently held up Jacob’s arm in one hand and a syringe in the other. I screamed again; he failed to register my outburst. Instead, he plunged the needle into the arm of my baby.
The bright red blood in the line instantly turned black.
The baby cried…only it wasn’t the infant making the sound. The sound came from the table on the right. The man sat up. When he was finally upright, the cloth covering his head fell away to reveal Jacob Plummer, the piercing cry of the baby falling from his lips.
“Jacob,” I screamed out, “no!”
*
“B, you’re having a dream, wake up.”
My eyes fluttered, the images in front of me blurry from welled-up tears.
“It’s Jamal. You’re okay; everything’s okay.”
It wasn’t; I could feel it. Some blossoming kernel, deep inside the core of my being, knew that something very wrong was happening. There was no way I could put the feelings into words without sounding like a lunatic. Instead, I chose the weak route and wrapped my arms around Jamal and let the tears flow.
“That’s right, B, cry it out. It’ll do you some good.”
I pulled back and punched Jamal on the shoulder.
“That’s for thinking a lousy cry would make it all feel better. Just crack your whip and shout cry, zombie, cry, like I’m your circus monkey.”
Jamal stared at me in utter shock.
“I’m just fucking with you, J-dizz.”
Jamal put his arm around me. “You okay? You must have been having one hell of a dream.”
I melted into his embrace. “You could say that.”
We sat there for a moment, unsure of what to say next.
“I just wan
t my baby back,” were the only words necessary before the tears began—once again—to pour from my eyes like rain. “God, Jamal, what’s wrong with me? My emotions are all over the place, lately; it’s driving me crazy.”
Jamal pulled back and turned to face me.
“Bethany, you’ve lost your son to the bastards who punched the human race in the gut. It’s quite understandable that your emotions would be all over the place. What’s wrong with you is that you’re human…in the best possible ways.” He engulfed me in his embrace. “I love you, Bethany.”
Silence…not the bad kind of what did he just say? silence. This was more about letting a moment breathe and sink into your soul.
When I finally pulled away, the look on Jamal’s face brought purpose and life back to my spirit.
“I love you too, Jamal.”
My empty stomach decided the moment had gone on long enough. The audible growl from my gut reminded me that too many meals had been skipped. The laughter that followed was all we needed to motivate us to the first mission of the day—find food.
The kitchen was stocked with every possible piece of cookware necessary to feed an army. Unfortunately, the pantries weren’t equally equipped. In fact, Old Mother Hubbard had nothing on our current situation.
“Paradise lost, I’d say.” Jamal sighed.
“Looks like you and I are going on a bit of a scavenger hunt.”
*
Morning sun was never my thing—it always seemed too harsh, too demanding. But in this case I was actually pretty okay with it. This go around meant I was still alive, which was about all you could ask for at the moment.
Jamal and I stared at the litter- and rubble-strewn city streets.
“Which way?” Jamal asked.
I pointed north and took off. There was no logic or reason behind the choice. Every street was a maze of debris, broken down cars, and broken bodies. It didn’t matter which direction we went.
Jamal pointed. “There’s a house. Should we pop in for a visit?”
“And maybe tea?” I gestured toward the house. “Lead the way.”
Inside, the house was no better off than the streets.
“I swear,” Jamal spoke softly, “this town must have been completely looted before it was walled up.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone bother walling off a city after it’s been stripped of everything that would keep it functioning? I would have thought this place stocked for Armageddon.”
“Literally.” Jamal winked.
“Jesus jumping Christ, is there anything of use in here?”
“This may sound crazy, because you know I can find a use for most anything, but no. This is a do-it-yourselfer’s nightmare.”
Jamal was right. The house contained not one piece of equipment, scrap of food, or article of clothing…nothing of use. From bottom floor to top, the house was littered with the wrecked remains of a snuffed-out life.
“B, why are there no corpses? Wouldn’t it stand to reason someone would have died inside these walls?”
“That’s a rather presumptuous conclusion. We have nothing to prove this house was actually occupied prior to the blast. Or what if the occupants were running errands when it all hit? Or what if they fled the scene of this post-apocalyptic crime?”
Jamal turned to me, his eyes wide. “Aha! Your conclusion assumes that whatever hit took out the inhabitants of the house immediately. How do we know the virus wasn’t slow to take hold here? Should that be the case, the infected could have wandered about for any given period of time—at least until the virus overtook their systems.”
The look on my face must have projected my reaction. Jamal’s eyes nearly doubled in size and he crossed to me, his hands in the air in surrender.
“I’m sorry, Bethany. I didn’t mean to insult you or dredge up old feelings.”
“Jamal, you know I’ve been through this before. I know how long the virus takes; I’ve seen it, firsthand, every step of the way.”
“I know, B, I’m sorry…”
I couldn’t allow those feelings to boil up again. One more visit to crazy-town and I might not return. So…I offered Jamal a smile. “It’s okay. Let’s just keep on moving through these houses until we find what we’re looking for.”
“Which is?”
I turned to Jamal, hands on my hips. “Anything to make survival a bit more, well, possible.”
It wasn’t until we hit the fourth house that something actually useful came up.
“Holy shit, Bethany,” Jamal grinned as he pointed out two equal-sized solar panels. “These babies will keep us in electricity for some time.”
Jamal was right. The four-by-six-feet panels were perfectly suited for our needs.
“We can squeeze about two hundred and fifty watts from a full charge.”
Jamal was busy checking out his find. He found the connection wires and traced them across the floor.
“Damn, girl, we are hitting the jackpot today. Here’s the inverter and charge controller.”
“Are you saying these panels will work?”
“I don’t see any damage to the silicon infrastructure. There’s no reason why they won’t deliver full wattage from a single charge. Oh…” Jamal’s voice drifted off.
“I don’t like it when you say ‘oh’, Jamal. What’s the ‘oh’ for?”
“It’s a good ‘oh’, trust me. I have an idea. All of these cars have batteries. We can use the solar panels to charge the batteries and use them to power what we need. Enough batteries and we can keep a steady rotation of juice flowing into whatever electrical device we need. All I have to do is find—or build—the right inverter to go from twelve volts to one hundred twenty volts.”
I laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?”
“You could build an inverter in your sleep. We’re as good as golden.”
“There is one problem…”
My heart briefly stopped. “One problem” in the apocalypse could mean the crumbling of our very infrastructure.
“How are we going to get all of this back to the headquarters?”
“We’ll just have to carry it.”
I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. Either that or I should have enlisted some of the others to come along for the ride.
“The solar panels and enough car batteries to…do you know how heavy a car battery is?”
I shook my head.
A metaphorical light blinked on over Jamal’s head. He always had the same look when a flicker of brilliance and he crossed paths. That flicker was fairly constant with the man.
“We find a truck that has enough fuel to run, load up the bed with car batteries, the solar panels, and whatever else we need, and drive it back to the headquarters. Simple.”
The apocalypse forgot to send Jamal the memo that nothing was simple any more.
The moans came at us like a freight train.
“Shit,” was all Jamal said.
“What is it?”
“Bethany, we’re surrounded.”
I didn’t want to hear those words. In no way, shape, or form was I prepared to take on a horde.
“How many?” I asked.
The moans sounded off again, as if to answer my question.
“Five, maybe.” Jamal confirmed my fear.
“Okay, Jamal; we have to stand our ground and fight. We run…there’s no way of knowing if these bastards will find us when we’re not expecting an attack. It’s now or never.”
“Come hold me tight,” Jamal whispered.
I got the reference. Now was not the time for Elvis, especially not Las Vegas Elvis.
The moans drew in closer. My eyes scanned the area for something, anything to get us out of the situation. Thankfully, necessity was the mother of invention. I pointed to a line of wire running along a trench.
“Jamal, what is that?”
“It looks like piano wire; but that makes no sense.”
“Whatever it is, help me.”
I instructed Jamal to tie one end of the wire off on a pole to the side of the road, at just above waist height, and then take the other end and tie it—after wrapping it around the handle of an errant tennis racket—to a clump of bushes and hide.
The plan was simple. I would lure the zombies to follow me. Once they walked into the wire, Jamal would rush out, wrap the undead bastards up and pull with all of his might and hope the wire sliced through the rotted flesh until the Moaners split in half. If it worked, I’d be amazed. If not, we’d run like hell.
We had to do something. At that moment, even this was better than nothing.
Just as Jamal tucked himself into the bushes, the zombie gang made themselves known.
“Over here, ya walking bags of pus.” I waved my hands above my head as I shouted.
The zombies heard me and shambled my way.
“That’s right, come and get some seriously fresh brain. You’ll not find a single dead cell in this piece of gray matter chowder.”
It was probably my imagination, but I swear one of the bastards licked his lips.
The group finally reached the wire, and I shouted, “Now!”
Jamal rushed out and raced around the zombies to complete the loop. With a heaving groan, he pulled with all of his nerd-body might.
“More power, Jamal.”
“I’m givin’ her all that I’ve got.”
Had the situation been a bit less grave, I would have laughed at the Star Trek reference. As it was…no laugh. Instead I joined Jamal, put my hands on the racket, and pulled until I felt my legs and arms would snap.
“I felt something,” Jamal shouted.
The line seemed to pop and then we were able to pull a bit further with surprising ease. I quickly realized why—the wire had managed to break the flesh barrier and find its way into the meat within. The clothing covering the zombies grew wet with a black sludge.
“Keep pulling,” I screamed.
The first zombie awkwardly bent at the waist and then snapped in half.
“Holy shit, B, it’s working.”
With that, we went at the apocalyptic game of tug-of-war with renewed gusto. Our efforts were quickly rewarded as the next victim found its upper half removed from its legs.
