by Alan Baxter
“I heard that it prevents you from turning even if you get bit,” said a Latino man wearing a Phoenix Suns ball cap.
“No,” said Millie, “it’s supposed to cure you even if you already have it.”
As she said this, she pushed the little girl behind her. It was a reflexive action. Protective. Ledger caught Tom’s eye and he saw that the young man understood. There was both understanding and heartbreak in his eyes. Although there was no obvious wound, both men knew that the girl was probably infected. A hidden bite or something else. Eating an animal that had been bitten by a zombie would do it, as would getting infected blood in an open wound or in a mucus membrane like the eyes, nose or mouth. The girl didn’t look sick, but that did not mean much. Some people got ill right away and lingered for weeks; others sickened and died overnight, and a few could go for quite a while before symptoms showed.
“Does that mean they can cure as well as prevent?” asked Tom.
“That’s what I heard,” said Barney, nodding firmly.
The Latino man’s companion, a short Asian woman, nodded, “Dr Pisani is a saint. I heard she was a famous doctor who worked with all kinds of diseases.”
“’She’?” asked Ledger. “I thought it was Al Pisani.”
“Allie,” explained Millie. “Allison. Women can be scientists, too.”
“As I know very well,” agreed Ledger. “I knew a lot of top flight women researchers, clinicians and practitioners.”
The Latino man studied him. “Who’d you lose?” he asked. “On Dia De Muertos.”
The Day of the Dead. It was one of a hundred different nicknames Ledger had heard for the end of the world. Tom’s little colony called it ‘First Night’. It was all the same thing. And though it took longer than a single night or day, it came out to the same thing in the end. The world they had all known had stopped. Just stopped. Those parts of it that had tumbled past the big point of impact were fragments. They were the things people clutched at to keep some sense of order, some aspects of things remembered, a comfortable lie of normalcy.
The truth was that the world continued to dwindle. If it got to the point where they dipped below five thousand people clustered in one area, then the gene pool would start to get pretty shallow and eventually would evaporate.
Ledger looked at the man and said, “I lost everyone.”
They all stood and looked at each other. They all nodded. No one commented.
At the head of the line the guard yelled, “Next!”
And the line moved forward one full step.
—14—
Top and Bunny
The men drove the van back to the compound, approaching from another side of the mountain where a village of red, white, and blue tents had been set up in front of another steel, hydraulic door like the one they’d been observing. The camp was big and contained several large circus-sized tents. The camp bustled with activity, and Bunny noted the red tents seemed much more heavily guarded than the others. The driver stopped and waited for the steel door to open before pulling inside. As the van door opened revealing a cavernous space, Top and Bunny took in their surroundings, seeing several barred holding cells labeled red, white, and blue nearby amidst several troop trucks, vans, and a strong smell of gunpowder and chemicals, like a hospital or lab.
“Red, white, and blue,” Top said, nodding to Bunny, but neither of them had any idea what it meant. Then they were being dragged along a corridor and shoved into a small white-walled room with two chairs facing a table.
“Sit!” someone demanded, then the door slammed behind them, leaving them alone.
“Jesus Christ, what is this place?” Bunny wondered.
“I don’t know, but we’re in it deep now,” Top replied.
“They took our weapons,” Bunny said. “We could have taken them out.”
“They had us dead to rights. One or both of us might be dead.”
Bunny sighed. Top was right but he still wished they’d put up more of a fight. “What do we do now?”
“Wait,” Top said simply as he stumbled over and slid into a chair. After looking around the room – standard interrogation plainness – it smelled clean, almost sterile, and the walls, table, and chairs shined like they’d been scrubbed regularly. Bunny went over and took the chair next to him, facing the table.
They didn’t wait long. Within a couple minutes, the door opened and a man in black entered, his slacks and black button down shirt creased, clean, like a dress uniform. He wore no tie but had on a leather jacket over the shirt and combat boots. He stared across the table at them, with the leader of the men who’d captured them standing at attention beside him as the door shut again.
Leather Coat nodded. “You don’t belong here.” His voice was sharp, baritone, with the firmness of one used to be in command. Was this their leader? The General perhaps?
“Where’s here?” Bunny asked.
“Cowboys out wandering about,” Leather Coat asked. “Not very smart given the state of the world.”
“Just trying to get along,” said Top. “Going day to day, that’s all.”
“Sneaking around and spying is ‘getting along’?”
The older man who’d led their captors stiffened and started forward, but Leather Coat stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Leave it, Diamond.”
The older man, Diamond, sighed, nodded, then stepped back to attention in his previous spot, watching them like a hawk.
“You got pretty much one chance here, fellows,” Leather Coat said. “Tell me who you are, where you got such fine weapons and ammo, and what you’re doing poking around our perimeter, and we might spare your lives.” He turned and winked at Diamond, who grinned as if they were exchanging a secret.
Bunny assumed they were dead regardless and spat, “No thanks.”
Top, who’d been taking it all in, shifted beside him. “As I told Diamond here,” again in his best Georgian drawl, “we’re just passing through trying to survive. We don’t want trouble and we didn’t bring no trouble with us.”
“No trouble and yet you have a military cache?” Leather Coat asked, clearly not buying it.
“Shit, man, everyone’s armed,” Top said. “Zoms don’t fall down from harsh language, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us. Old man like me has to tilt the odds in his favor, feel me? You understand. Clearly. You’re all heavily armed. Circumstances seem to demand it, don’t they? If we want to survive, I mean.”
Leather Coat locked eyes with Top a moment, considering, reading him, then he smiled. “Can’t argue with that, can we, Major Diamond?”
Diamond nodded. “No, sir.”
Leather Coat turned back to Top and Bunny. “Part of how we stay alive is deciding whom we let have weapons and whom we don’t. You understand? Can’t have untrustworthy types wandering around shooting at just anyone.”
Top smiled warmly. “Yes, sir, makes sense to me. But we were just passing through and headed on down to Mexico.”
“Mexico? Why?”
Top shrugged. “Find some shelter, food, supplies, and maybe stay away from the cities and live a while longer.”
Leather Coat chuckled. “Mexico, huh? Mexico’s full of rotting wetback zombies and shacks, Reb. Doesn’t sound very smart to me.”
Top shrugged again. “Sometimes the least expected places provide the best resources in times like these.” Bunny watched as the two stared at each other for a bit, then Leather Coat chuckled again.
“Well, sorry to say you men won’t be making it.” He turned to Diamond. “Major, red tag them and throw them in with the next batch.”
“Yes, General,” Diamond replied with a stiff salute as Leather Coat turned for the door.
“General? General who?” Bunny demanded.
Leather Coat turned back. “General Ike Black, son.”
“G
eneral of what army?” Bunny retorted.
“The only army that matters in these parts.” Black smiled knowingly, then turned and left the room.
“Well,” muttered Bunny, “that was fun.”
Then men rushed in and yanked Top and Bunny to their feet, pushing them out the door and back down the narrow corridor toward the cavern with the steel door and holding pens, Major Diamond leading the way. Bunny’s wrists hurt from the rope cutting into them and his shoulder wasn’t too happy either from all the yanking.
“Fuck you very much,” he said under his breath.
“Throw them in there,” Diamond ordered, motioning to nearby pen.
Top and Bunny were halted outside the door, and the rope cut from their wrists. Bunny was about to rub his with relief when the rope was replaced by red wristbands, and they were shoved inside.
“The rest of you clear the others out!” Diamond shouted. “New batch coming in!”
The holding pen door clanged shut as Top and Bunny watched the men around them scramble.
Men and women in lab coats appeared, hauling stretchers – some on wheels, others not – toward the waiting troop trucks, white sheets laid over the top. A coppery smell, like blood, filled the air and mixed with the chemicals, gun powder, and sweat.
“Load ‘em up,” one man said, laughing as he stepped up into the truck with a buddy and took stretchers from the incoming workers. As they turned to carry one back into the truck, the sheet shifted and wrist fell out – a wrist with a red band like the ones Top and Bunny now wore.
“This can’t be good,” Top said as they both stared.
“Wonder what the blue and white mean,” Bunny said.
They exchanged a knowing look – We gotta get the fuck outta here… fast.
—15—
The Soldier and the Samurai
The guard beckoned for them to come up. Bernie and Millie glanced at them over their shoulders as they walked on with the little girl between them. Ledger had listened closely to the questions the guards had asked the old couple.
“What did you do before the End?”
“Can you cook from scratch?”
“Do you have any skills? Can you fix a car? Did you work in construction? Are you a plumber? Do you have medical training?”
“Have you served in the military? Or the police?”
“Can you hunt and fish? Do you know how to dress what you catch?”
Like that. Fast questions. Very interesting questions.
Both Bernie and Millie were given red wristbands. The girl was given a blue one.
Bernie had served in the first Gulf War and then worked as a cop. Millie had been an accountant. Ledger did not see an immediate connection that would have put them in whatever the ‘red’ category was.
The couple before them, the Latino man and Asian woman, had both been given white bands. He had been a mechanic working mostly with two-stroke engines – ATVs, motorcycles and lawnmowers. The woman owned a hothouse where she grew herbs for restaurants.
Why white for them and red for the older couple? Was it an age thing?
Then something occurred to him and he grunted softly. Before they stepped up to the guard, Ledger leaned close to Tom and whispered, “I’m a baseball coach from Pittsburgh. I went deer hunting every year.”
Tom looked startled for a moment. “I don’t—”
“You’re a cook. You like to fish.”
“I…”
Ledger gave him a hard stare, and after a moment Tom nodded.
“Hey,” called the guard, “I ain’t got all day.”
They stepped up and the questions began. Ledger took point and went through his fictional career teaching health class and coaching baseball. He had the build for the sport, and even the guard seemed to buy it right away. “You played what, third base?”
“Right the first time,” said Ledger, smiling and trying to look like Robert Redford from the old movie The Natural. When the guard asked if he had ever hunted, Ledger went through a story about this eight-point buck he’d tracked and how he made venison stew that would have made you cry. He knew he sold it well.
“You ever serve in the military?” asked the second guard.
“Me? Nah. Not much for that sort of thing. Maybe I should have, but the only fights I ever liked were about keeping a hotshot runner from stealing third.”
They all laughed about that.
When it was Tom’s turn he laid on a thick Japanese accent that was totally false. Like his older brother, Sam, Tom had been born in California and had never even been to Japan. The accent rang true, though, and Ledger figured he was mimicking his old man. Tom talked about working at a sushi place in San Francisco. He talked about how he sometimes used to catch the fish he’d later clean and serve. He sold it really well. So well the guards were starting to look hungry.
“You got anything for the general?” asked the first guard.
“General?” asked Ledger, playing dumb. “This a military thing?”
“Yeah,” said the guard, “we’re here to protect and serve.”
That was a police slogan, but Ledger didn’t bother to correct him. “Who’s the general?”
“Ike Black,” said the guard. “He is the man, too. Tough cocksucker who’s going to put this country back on its wheels.”
“Is he?”
“Damn skippy he is.”
“Make America great again,” said Ledger with a straight face. “Count me in.”
The guard nodded as if they were all on the same page. “We’re big on swapping goods for services, around here, if you can dig it.”
“Sure can,” said Ledger. The name Ike Black tickled something in the back of Ledger’s mind. He’d heard that name before but it had been a long time ago and the connections were somehow wrong. A general? No, that didn’t seem quite right, but he couldn’t pin down what he remembered. “Let me see what I got.”
Ledger fished in his pack and brought out a revolver he’d taken from the men they’d killed. It was a hell of a thing to offer. His own pistol was hidden in his pack, and their swords were stashed between rocks half a mile out of town.
The guard took the revolver and nodded like a kid on Christmas morning. “God damn, man,” he said. “Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special. This is a classic. Sweet.”
“Glad you like it.”
“This your own piece?”
“Found it in a house that had been overrun,” Ledger said. “I took it but it’s not really my kind of thing. I’m more of a long gun guy. Can’t hit shit with a little wheel gun like that. Besides, what’s a gun going to do for me if I get sick, right? There are more eaters out there than bullets. I’d rather know that those dead fuckers can’t make me into one of them, you know?”
The guard offered him a fist and they bumped.
“We’re looking for guys like you,” he said.
He tied white ribbons around Ledger’s wrist, and when Tom turned over a pouch filled with rabbit jerky he got one as well.
Everyone smiled at one another and the guards told them to go straight through to the center of the camp. They thanked them and moved off. The camp was big and covered much of the area outside of the mountain entrance. There were several large tents that looked like they might have belonged to a circus back in the day. Above each was a flagpole, and Ledger saw several white flags, some blue flags and, on the tent set apart from the others, a red flag. There were three times as many guards around the red tent and he pointed this out to Tom.
“What’s it mean?” asked Tom.
“Nothing good,” said Ledger.
Behind the white tents was the entrance to the mountain, which they could see as they drew closer. The door was a massive panel of reinforced steel that was partly raised to allow people to enter. A line of refugees, all of them wearing white
bands, snaked out of the mouth of the cavern. There were guards everywhere, standing watch outside the entrance and walking up and down the lines checking to make sure of the wristband colors. All of them heavily armed.
Tom said, “Something’s wrong here.”
Ledger grinned. “No shit.”
“You didn’t want them to know we used to be cops.”
“Nope.”
“You know something or just guessing?”
“Bit of both,” admitted Ledger. “I was trying to stack the odds in favor of us getting white ribbons.”
“Why?”
They walked a few paces before Ledger replied. “Because I have a bad feeling that anyone going to that red tent isn’t likely to enjoy what they find.”
Another team of guards stopped them as they approached the end of the line.
“Drop your gear over there,” said one of them, pointing to a row of wheelbarrows. “No one’ll touch your shit.”
They did as asked; though Ledger hoped like hell that no one would search the backpacks while they were inside. He had an explanation for the automatic pistol, but it would be harder to sell here than at the guard outpost. These men looked sharper, more competent, and far less agreeable.
“Arms up and out,” said the second guard. “Legs wide.”
Ledger pretended to be too dense to understand that they wanted to frisk him, and he let the guard push him roughly into the correct position. He had expected this, though, and had left most of his other weapons with his sword. His small Wilson rapid-release folding knife was clipped to the low Vee of his undershirt because the front of the chest was one of those places most people never bothered to check, even during a vigorous pat-down. Nor did they pat his chest now. They hadn’t taken off his shoes or belt, either. Ledger kept his relief and amusement off his face.
Once they were cleared, one of the guards told them to go into the tent. They did and inside they saw what looked like an old-fashioned vaccination set-up of the kind once used in third-world countries by groups like the World Health Organization. People stood in a long switchback line that brought them to three separate inoculation stations where official-looking people in white lab coats administered shots. Once each person had received an injection they were ushered out of the tent through an opening in the back. There were maybe a hundred and fifty people in all. Most of the people were women, and young women at that. Ledger noticed there was an unusually high percentage of attractive women for a group that was supposed to be more or less random. Peppered among the women were healthy-looking teens and a few men. The mathematics of it all made Ledger’s heart sink and his jaw clench.
