by catt dahman
Connie continued shrieking as the creature left her arm and bit into her forehead, worrying at the skin, trying to get a mouthful, and partially scalping her in the process. It didn’t find satisfaction until it began chewing at her cheeks and lips, ripping off her nose and making her only able to gurgle as blood poured down her throat. She was too weak to fight back.
Andie silently moved as soon as she saw the right time. She was now darting from tree to tree in the shadows, listening, and trying to think about how she could escape and meet the other two at a place they planned for when they thought there might be a chance to escape one day.
Looking for Mark in the darkness, Andie tried to remain quiet, crawling at times, guessing where she was. Right then, she needed to get away from the zombies and the RA, and then she could sort out the rest when she was in a better spot.
Losing sight of Andie, Mark ran all out, waiting for a bullet to his back or a hidden zombie to step into his path, but he was gaining ground. He stopped once when one groaned, taking the time to bash at it with a broken tree limb and then a rock, making brains spill out on the ground. It was satisfying.
To be free, fighting back, and in control of his life again was exhilarating. Of all of the tortures imaginable, making a man a slave and taking away his ability to have some control and choices were by far the worst. Slavery broke the mind, heart, and soul. But that was over.
Mark let the anger and helplessness go as he beat at the thing’s head. He sat and was quiet, going inside his own head where it was sane and safe, but if he thought too much about it, well, he would have the same dead feeling that Kim seemed to have.
Kim watched, and then he moved.
His head buzzed with fever, but Kim got to his feet, with pain making him go pale. They were not chained yet since that night they looked so defeated and weak. Mark, Andie, and he still had some fight left, and this was the chance he had waited for.
Only he was so sick that he wondered if it were too late. Taking careful steps, he threaded his way back to the clearing where his captors were.
He was glad Andie and Mark ran with their freedom. He was a slave now to something else.
A pair of zombies who seemed satisfied just to sit and eat devoured Cole. It looked as if Cole went down very hard, with fingers gnawed and bitten, arms awash with blood, and stomach ripped open like a banquet. The zombies pulled sections of intestines out and chewed; the smell wafting from the body was horrific.
Lee was on his back, groaning with pain; a crawler had stripped Lee’s legs. Someone shot the legs out from under the crawler; maybe Lee had, but forgot in drunkenness that the bastards could crawl and chew easily; they were the Jumping Jack Flashes of the zombie world. Lee was crying, too weak to move away but still conscious; shock was taking away some of the pain, but he was in agony.
Kim kicked the zombie in the face, almost falling over and becoming the next victim, but he caught himself and then stomped in its head, thinking he might pass out.
However, Kim steeled himself, then reached down, grabbed the back of Lee’s shirt, and began to pull him into the woods. The man weighed too much for Kim to move easily, but Lee was conscious, could feel pain, and was the only one alive, it seemed.
There wasn’t anyone else for Kim’s rage.
He spun when he heard footsteps; they were fast ones. “Hey, good job.”It was Mike, who always savaged Andie the hardest. It was Mike that would feed them only roasted human parts for sustenance. It was Mike who peed all over the mud where they were kept.
“Son of a bitch shot me,” he whispered to Kim, “shot me; I need a doctor.”
Kim wondered if this man even realized who he was. Maybe. After all, they were on the same side now that zombies had attacked, right?Kim knelt and tied a strip torn from Mike’s shirt around the Mike’s leg. He lost a lot of blood, but that was all that was done right then. “Through and through. That’s better than if the bullet was still in you.”
“Everyone’s dead,” Mike said.
“They’re all over; we need to get out of here.” Kim wasn’t sure he could continue, but just seeing Mike alive and okay cheered him up amazingly.
“Let’s go.”
“What about him?” Kim pointed to Lee who looked at them with terrified eyes; he had to know it was all over for him.
“Don’t look like he can walk, yanno?”
“Mike, help me,” Lee groaned.
“You want to?” Kim mimed shooting a pistol with his hand.
“The Zs might hear a shot and come after us or the rest of the army, wanting us to fight the zoms. I just want out of here,” Mike whined, “I can’t find my gun.”
“You could bash in his head,” Kim suggested.
Lee cried now, begging and pleading for help.
Mike shook his head, “Naw. I don’t wanna do that to someone I ran with. That’s…that’s just sick. You want to?”
Kim shook his said. “No.” This man who ate human flesh, raped women, and tortured people thought bashing in a friend’s head to end suffering was sick? Coward.
“Let’s just go.” Lee didn’t deserve Kim’s mercy anyway.
They stopped after getting some distance between the fight near the highway and themselves. Mike offered his canteen to Kim after taking a swallow of his own, and Kim drained it dry.
The spot was quiet, and after some looking around, Kim seemed to think the place was safe for a rest.
In a little while, Kim said they should go another half mile and then take a long rest. Mike agreed tiredly.
When they approached a good spot, Kim bumped into Mike, and before Mike knew it, Kim had Mike’s own cuffs on one of Mike’s wrists; the cuff was wrapped around a small tree and attached to Mike’s other wrist. “Didn’t know I was that good of a pickpocket,” Kim admitted.
“Let me go. Hey….”
“Shut up, or I’ll call zeds and leave you to them,” Kim said. He searched Mike’s equipment and found another bottle of water and some first aid supplies.
Kim didn’t have much, but he cut open his own jeans, cleaned the deep, infected gash with an anti-bacterial wipe, sopping up the pus, smeared cream onto it, slapped a make shift bandage in place, and added a bandana. “Amazing how that hurts but feels better, just simple first aid you could have offered. And my back, this would have helped it, but then you all were the ones who put the stripes into me and had me sleeping in mud you pissed in.”
“Well, I regret that, now,” Mike said.
“I bet so. Too little and too late.”
“What about me? I need first aid,” Mike said.
“Yep, so does my back where your buddy Lee whipped me. You’ll get my help when hell freezes. I stopped some of the bleeding; be appreciative.”
“What, are you gonna take me with you? You wouldn’t leave me here, would you? I’d starve or die of thirst or a zom might get me.”
“That’s true,” said Kim as he swallowed some aspirin.
“We didn’t kill you.”
“That’s true and something to consider. You did keep us alive….”
Mike nodded, “Riight. We did. And you have to appreciate that some. I could watch your back out here; there are Zs and maybe some RA about….”
“True, I think I can watch my infected, hurting, scarred, maybe-gonna-kill-me-with-the-poison own back,” Kim said. His fever raged on, and anyone looking at him would hardly know the man with his dirty beard, pained body, and haunted eyes, along with filth all over him, caked into new lines in his face. Len knew the look in his eyes though.
“At first, I wanted to escape. Then, I wanted to die. Sometimes, I wanted to escape again, but then I wanted to live. Do you know why I wanted to live?” Kim asked.
“Maybe you have family?” Mike looked afraid.
“It wasn’t that. It was a little dream I kept having, a memory; I kept thinking of Warren and the zombie.”
“I don’t know Warren.”
“No. He was just a guy, but one of your ki
nsmen tortured him by letting a Zombie chew on him to get information.”
“It wasn’t me though,” said Mike.
“No, but it was one like you. In extreme times, we forget how bad each act is when each is a nightmare unto itself, and each nightmare runs together into one big horror show,” Kim said dreamily.
“That was another man who did that. Lee did what Lee did. Cole did what Cole did and so on. Each action you did was evil, but it runs together in my head. This is just one big horror show.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I guess I am. I mean, it may be him or you, but it’s all the same to me,” Kim said. “And it may be Len or me, but it’s all the same, too.”
“I don’t understand,” Mike said.
“I know you don’t, but I do. Tonight, I am Len.”
Kim began.
18
Hopetown
The past weeks were both good and bad. The huge hauls they made and the added security were good. More refugees, coming in without injuries or losses, added some morale as they saw everyone working harder to add more comforts and to take back some semblance of normality.
Sometimes zombies appeared at the gate as if wanting to be shot down, and sometimes they found them whenever they made hauls, but it was as if they all gathered somewhere else for the time being. No one took that as a sign the war with the walking dead was over, but was, rather, on hold for a while.
A pair of survivors came in and eagerly joined the group, sharing stories they heard and events they saw while barely avoiding the zeds, the Reconstruction Army, and other crazies that seemed everywhere now.
The man told of how the RA was in place in Hope, Arkansas and in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The buzz was that the RA was considering an exploratory attack on Hopetown, but nothing was set in stone.
However, before they could decide, a huge horde of zombies attacked the RA soldiers stationed at the State Line and in Hope, ripping and chewing their way through the army as if it were nothing.
The army panicked, killing the slaves they amassed, as they tried to lighten their load and bug out. Less than a quarter of the army from either place made it out; those in the motor home with the prostitutes simply rolled out over the creatures. The rest were turned and, if not eaten to the bone, were now among a new army.
It looked as if no slaves made it out since they were chained and either were shot by their owners or attacked by the zeds.
It was another blow to everyone in Hopetown, especially to Misty and Beth.
Beth reasoned that she and Kim were apart longer than they had initially been a couple. She felt a dull ache, but time did its work in healing some of the pain.
Mostly, Misty just felt as if it were an older loss that still hurt, and she accidentally moved on when she wasn’t paying attention. She still romanticized her relationship and was more upset, but she was young, and time would help her as well.
Beth just didn’t know how a baby fit into all of this; a baby in this world was far more dangerous and difficult to protect. Beth knew she had more responsibilities than just motherhood. An abortion wasn’t something she could even consider, so she tried to ignore the idea of being pregnant and had told no one yet.
She was a little over three months along and didn’t have to think about it for another month or two.
Beth’s team was going to stand in for Bravo team in a few hours, so they swore not to have more than two drinks at the gathering. Since she couldn’t drink anyway, Beth closely watched over her team.
George was playing bartender so that he could also keep track of the drinking and that no one got hammered.
The children prepared two play productions, and when Bravo came in, the children would present the second one. George thought that most would attend both showings since he and the rest laughed almost to crying at the first showing.
Some of the children acted as George, Benny, and Thurman in make-up and carrying walking sticks to over-emphasize the men’s ages. Benny seemed to have shared his conversation in the meeting because the skit was about their looking for donuts to sit on but finding only whoopee cushions.
A little one dressed in Gothic attire pretended to be Jet, and Katie was cast as Hannah. The little Jet was changing out whoopee cushions for the donuts while Katie, pretending to be Hannah, rattled off facts and information about the history of the cushions and donuts.
Hannah took the stage as she and some of the older kids pretended to be Len, Julia, and Beth. Beth’s character continuously tried to better the other two while Hannah, acting as Julia, rattled off nonsense Spanish, said in a way that sounded obscene but really was just common words. With a hateful look, she snarled as she called someone a ‘fast car’.Everyone rolled.
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Julia protested as she laughed.
Len’s character kept barking orders that made no sense. “Shut up, and let’s hear some noise. Everyone run over here, and keep still,” the child yelled in a Len-like way. The others tried to follow both orders and fell over each other.
In the next skit, Juan, Carl, and Misty were characters as they raced around the stage with some of the others, trying to flee from the zombies who were the other children, not in scary make-up but as clowns. “I prefer zombies, not clowns!” Zane screamed to the audience.
For the final act, Hannah, Jet, and Zane took the stage alone. While they began to list cities in the US:Seattle, Santa Fe, Austin, Tampa, Katie, in a clear, beautiful voice, began singing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA.”
By the end, everyone was on his or her feet and in tears as the children all joined in to sing. The lights went down, and everyone began a thunderous applause but stopped as a spotlight came on.
Jilly, as Cinder Montaine, stood there. She sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” and as she got to the end, the children gathered and sang the last few lines of the former song again, softly, but then their voices rose until they were louder than she was. Next, she and they sang together until the end of the song. Then, all alone, she sang, “God Bless the USA.”
For a long second, the audience did not move. Each one held that final note in his mind; then, George began clapping, and everyone began cheering; there was chaos but happy chaos as everyone, still applauding, ran to the children.
They went to the mess hall for snacks and drinks, but George was sure that after that, everyone would go back and see the show again. He thought this was the best show he had ever seen.
“Did you laugh, George?” asked Hannah as she was getting some punch.
“Couldn’t you hear me?” he said, “Hannah, you were all brilliant.”
“Jet directed most of it. He’s talented.”
“He really is. I enjoyed it all; the singing was really amazing, but those skits were very funny. Benny and Thurman almost burst their pants laughing.”
“Beth says I can’t have night duty,” said Hannah.
“I expect she’s right. Moms usually are,” said George, grinning.
Hannah shrugged, looking for someone else to try her argument on for night duty, but it wasn’t looking very positive.
Jilly was singing country songs and some other old songs that people could dance to. Hannah saw Beth dance with Conner and Len, which was funny since both men were clearly not dancers at heart.
John danced with Beth, and Hannah thought he danced a little too close to her mother and held her way too tight. Beth smiled a lot and looked as if she enjoyed the dance.
Beth did enjoy it. It was like before the world went bad.She begged off the next dance, drank some punch, and then went to dance with Juan.
She always knew Juan was a big guy, tall and solidly muscled, but dancing with him made Beth feel tiny. With him, she felt a familiarity from their close teamwork and herself relaxing, leaning into him where she felt safe and warm.
She didn’t even think until she glanced up and saw Julia and Alex, watching her with puzzled smiles. Three songs went by while she and Juan danced, the
motion and relaxation lulling her; it felt so nice. She was so lonely sometimes.
With a jerk, Beth pulled away, surprising Juan, and said it was time they went in to work for Bravo team. In those minutes, she went from being vulnerable and peaceful to being loaded with her gear and weapons and feeling strong and aggressive again.
Strangely, she felt more familiar with the aggression and focus on work. “Let’s roll, Charlie team,” she said.
“How was the show?” Pan asked.
“You and the rest will laugh your heads off…then…well, it’s amazing, trust me. I don’t want to ruin your shock at how good it really is,” Beth told him.
“We can use some fun,” Johnny said, “so they did well? For kids?”
“Jilly and Jet have a lot of talent, and without television and Internet, the children used, oh, books, I guess, and imagination; it’s a really good show. My girls did fantastic, but I’m sure all parents brag.” Beth watched the riders dismount. “Hey, Natalie, you’re riding like an expert these days.”
“Thanks, Beth. Julia and Juan gave us some extra time this week for practice; it’s getting easier.”
Henry laughed, “Maybe, it’s easier on you, youngsters.”
“We all need to get better; I heard the gasoline isn’t coming in now, or it isn’t as good, so better get some calluses on your ass,” Johnny said as they went inside.
Beth asked some to take guard duty near the gate, but she and Juan went one way on horseback, and Carl and Trip went the other, all to patrol.
“Juan, have you noticed how many we have coming in? It’s pretty unreal; I don’t know them all very well yet.”
“I stick to the old crew; well, I was new at one time, but….”
“I know. The old basic crew,” Beth agreed, “what’s that?” A dog or wolf ran past the fence, howling mournfully. Lights were shining from the road that went close to the fence at that point.
