I sigh heavily before answering. “I don’t know really.” She nods slightly and I watch her shoulders start to shake. “It’s not you,” I tell her. But this sounds like bullshit. Even though it is true. “I just,” I search the wall and the floor for the right way to put it. “I don’t feel things like I used to feel them. Which doesn’t make much sense but after I had to shoot my father…”
She sits straight up and looks at me with shocked and shattered blue eyes. “You had to do what?”
I tell her of the tractor and the morning that Dad’s muddy boot slipped off the right rear brake as his sleeve hooked the accelerator. How I was coming back from rabbit hunting and got to the feeder pen just as the big International Harvester walked up on the feed trough and flipped over, the arm rest square across his back, his leg sticking out an impossible angle from the rear tire. “I saw the whole thing and I still don’t know how he ended up pinned like that. It was like the whole thing was spring loaded.”
Her face is blank now. She’s overwhelmed by her condition and my story. I haven’t told her the worst part yet but I can’t stop now. My body feels weightless and I can’t feel my pulse as I go back into the memory. “It is hard to talk about without sounding like I’m fishing for sympathy or trying to make it more dramatic. But some things are just fucked up.”
“So you shot him?” she asks when I can’t decide how to go on.
“Yeah,” I answer with a big exhale. “I was coming back from hunting, like I said. Got a couple of rabbits, a quail. Had that single barrel 12 gauge. It just looked like it was unbearable and god knows I’d put enough cows and dogs down when they were hurt’n. So I thumbed the hammer back, lined up and just… let him have it.”
Her hand comes to my shoulder but now she doesn’t know what to say. “So then the sheriff had to come out. And there was an investigation. Coroner said Dad was pretty much dead when I shot him. Even with a full medical team and a surgery room right there, he wouldn’t have made it. So they didn’t press charges. But everybody else seemed to make up their own minds. Small towns ain’t a great place to live when your life blows up all to shit.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek while she digests my story. This still doesn’t go too far in figuring out what to do. I finally clear my throat and tell Karen, “I think if I felt stuff like most people did, I’d say I loved you. That’s what I oughta feel. And maybe I do. It’s just kinda fucked up and hard to tell.”
I forget my eyes are as dead looking as any Zed that ever walked. She tries to look at me but it’s been different since the fever. She still can’t look. And my lackluster emotional state leaves her more confused than before. I still have my arm around her but I’m holding onto nothing. She’s still suffering. “I do care,” I tell her at last. “That much I know. I don’t want to see you hurt. And it’s like Ray said, the world will start over again. We’re not gonna be stuck out here in ‘Fort Wayne’ forever. And, you know,” I swallow hard before the lie, “you’ll make a good mother.”
She cries some more and finally lies down to take a nap. I step outside into the slow falling snow and light one of my few remaining cigarettes. The tobacco glows ash and the white smoke rolls out and away against the snow.
Big Donna and Tyler are walking into the house. Tyler looks at me but doesn’t wave. He still sulks most of the time. Now his misery has company. The two disappear into the warm house and I walk out into the compound to weigh my options.
In the late afternoon, I walk back to the bath house and open the door quietly. Karen has cried herself to sleep but the fire in the woodstove is crackling hot and warm. She looks peaceful in her sleep and her pale skin barely shows above the edge of the wool blankets. Deep inside me, I feel something stir and I realize I do care about her. She carries my child and we have been through so much together. I stand and think about what I should feel and what those feelings might have me do.
I watch her sleep. And I can feel my eyes getting moist. It’s what she wants. And I should love her. I think the words without saying them but there is no need to say them since she’ll never hear them. I pull the .45 slowly out of my waistband and quietly thumb the hammer back. My hands sweat against the metal and wood, but they do not tremble. It just has to be done.
I move forward quietly to get as close as possible without waking her. The floor is solid and doesn’t creak. A glowing coal in the woodstove leaps with a snap and a trail of orange sparks extinguish in midair. To just go to sleep and not wake up. It is a gift. It is all I can offer her.
I bring the .45 around and hold it a few inches away from her ear. But this seems mean for some reason and I move the gun to her temple. One in the head there and then another one if she needs it. She can’t suffer anymore. The life inside isn’t far enough long to survive for long without her. Maybe I should shoot her down low afterwards to send them both out.
“What are you doing?” Eddie was asleep on the floor behind me. He’s watched the whole thing. There’s no way to say that I was doing something else. There’s no way to explain what I’m doing.
“I…” the words completely leave me. But I leave the gun where it hangs. “I have to help her,” I finally tell him. “I can’t really explain it to you and have it make sense.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t do it until you can explain it and have it make sense.” I turn to look at him. His face is calm and free of alarm or judgment. “My dad used to say that just because you feel like doing something, doesn’t mean you ought to do it. He used to say, unless you could explain what you were doing and have it make sense, then chances were, it didn’t make sense and you shouldn’t do it. He used to say that things get twisted up in people’s minds and that’s why the world was so messed up. He said that people always trust what they feel, but they ought to also listen to what they know.”
I look down at Karen. She is awake and listening but hasn’t moved. Her eyes track back and forth from me to Eddie. “Your dad sounds like he was a pretty smart guy,” I tell him.
“He was,” Eddie says. “He told me lots of things and even though he isn’t here anymore, I still remember the things he used to say and they help me. The thing I remember the most is when he told me that doing the right thing is almost always the hardest thing.”
I nod slowly and safety the pistol. I feel kind of stupid standing there holding it. Especially in front of the kid who had to kill his Zed father with an axe. Karen has removed the blanket from her face but she isn’t crying anymore.
“Is this the hardest thing?” Eddie asks me. I shake my head no. “Well, whatever the hardest thing is, you should probably do that. And you’ll be fine.”
I see Karen move under the blanket, her arm outstretched. I take her by the hand and leave my pistol lying on the table. I curl up next to her and hold her close to me. It is warm in the bed beside her. And crushing. And horrible. And damn near impossible to breathe. She moves my hand down to her belly and smiles back at me. I want to tear out my teeth with pliers and run naked into the night. It must be the right thing to do.
Chapter 24: Compound Interest
“Hear that?” Ray asks. His mouth is open, ready to take a bite of pan fried brown stuff. “That sounds like…” We all get up from the table of the main house and move to the windows and doors. No one rushes outside. The noise from above is unmistakable. The chopping air and the low rattling can only be a helicopter.
“Should we signal it?” Betty asks, her arm wrapped tightly around Kevin’s.
“Or run away,” I mutter.
“Nah, we don’t need to do nuthin,” Kevin says and continues chewing on a piece of squirrel. “They see the smoke coming from the chimney. I reckon they’ll stop whether we want’em to or not.” He steps just outside the front door and looks to the sky. “They’s two of’em.”
We all lean out of the house as far as we can to see them. Both helicopters hover over the compound for a moment. It is impossible to see what color they are; only black silhouettes framed
against the gray midday sky.
“It’s blinking,” Ray says from his perch at the side window. “Look at that, right under the thing there. Now look at the roof of the bath house.” A bright green laser pulses on the roof of the bath house. Another appears over the ground covering the bunker. “What the fuck are they doing?”
One of the helicopters drops down closer and a package is shoved out of the side door. A gunner is now visible, the barrel swinging back and forth. The package jerks a few feet below the chopper’s skids and a flurry of different colored paper begins to drift down on us. The helicopters hover for a moment and then quickly move off out of sight beyond the tree line.
“Well that’s a fine how do you do,” Kevin says and tosses the squirrel bone he’s been chewing on out into the mud. “Ain’t seen hide nor hair of nobody in forever and then they fly over and drop a bunch of garbage.”
Tyler steps out into the courtyard and grabs one of the hundreds of leaflets falling from the sky. He stands and reads it for a moment before bringing it back into the house.
“Well,” Betty demands. “What’s it say?”
Tyler is smiling. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He looks almost happy. “I’m packing. And getting out of here. You guys can make up your own minds.” He hands the flyer to Ray and is off to his room upstairs.
Ray holds the paper out at arm’s length and begins to read:
LEGAL NOTICE
Any and all persons in receipt of this LEGAL NOTICE, as issued by The Bank, are hereby advised of their legal obligations under the Summers Act of 2012, which are to wit:
a) All persons notified of the aforementioned act are to assemble for collection at the place of notification 24 hours after receipt of said notification for transport to processing facilities located in the Safe Zone.
b) Individuals will be assessed for exposure to infection and contamination and provided with free medical support.*
c) It is ILLEGAL to remain in the Infected Zone. All persons found trespassing in the Infected Zone, now property of The Bank, will be deemed infected and subject to fine, imprisonment or removal by whatever means necessary.
d) All assets, properties and items of any value located within the Infected Zone are now the property of The Bank and any persons found in possession of said assets, properties or items will be prosecuted under the provisions of the Summers Act.
THERE WILL BE NO SECOND OPPORTUNITY. ALL PERSONS ADVISED OF THIS NOTICE ARE TO ASSEMBLE AT THIS COLLECTION POINT WITHIN 24 HOURS OF RECEIPT. ALL PERSONS REMAINING IN THE INFECTED ZONE AFTER RECEIPT OF SAID NOTICE WILL BE VIEWED AS HOSTILE AND/OR INFECTED.
*Free Medical Support available up to $500. All balances above $500 are to be paid by the patient.
THE BANK AND YOU
WORKING TOGETHER FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
Ray stops reading, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Lemme see that,” Kevin says and snatches the paper away from Ray. “Property of The Bank. What is ‘The Bank’ and how the hell do they figure they own everything now?”
Tyler comes down from the attic with a backpack slung on his shoulder. He’s added a shotgun to his pack and carries the MP5 across his chest. He’s still smiling but it isn’t a happy smile. “Out of the frying pan,” he says with no small amount of sarcasm.
“Where you going?” Kevin asks.
“Away from here. As fast as possible,” Tyler says and takes another step down. “You don’t really think they’ll be back in 24 hours to pick everyone up, do you?”
“It’s what the notice says.” Big Donna is holding the leaflet in her hand and going over and over it. “It says they’ll take us out of here, give us medical care. I don’t really care about the rest of it. They can have all of this if they want it.”
“It doesn’t bother you that they’re calling this the infected zone? You’ll be ‘assessed for contamination.’ We’ve all been exposed, haven’t we? And what do you think happens to the contaminated people? Think they’ll just keep everybody from the infected zone in a separate housing development?”
Kevin looks at me with a somber expression. “Guess you’re fucked.”
“We all are,” Tyler says waving his arms. “We’re all fucked if we stay here or if we go with them. Just because we don’t look like Billy doesn’t mean that they won’t ‘remove us’ anyway. Even if we hadn’t been eating the stuff, they’d still determine that we’ve all been exposed and cart us off to the incinerators.”
“Hang on, hang on,” Ray interjects. “Why warn us then? Why not just roll through here and kill everything moving? Why drop leaflets when they could have just bombed the bejesus out of all of us, right now, end it all, done. Why not do that, smart guy?”
Tyler is smiling again. “Catch more rats with cheese than you do with a sledgehammer.” Ray winces and shakes his shoulder and mouths the word ‘what?’ Tyler spells it out for him in detail. “The Infected Zone, as it were, is a fucking huge piece of real estate. If they can spend a little time and money dropping leaflets, and if people fall for it, then they get everyone together in a group. It’d take a helluva lot longer to go around individually targeting every single survivor. Even ten or twenty at a time is much faster than one at a time.
“And let’s say that people do show up. Alright, so they collect a few ‘specimens’ for study and instead of getting shot or blown up, you get carted off to the lab to have tests run on you. Maybe they want to weaponize this shit. Maybe they want to test out vaccines, see what the side effects are. Maybe they’ve figured out how to eat this stuff as well and this is the new cash crop of the future. You can bet the farm that when you see corporate funded helicopters out dropping leaflets instead of government or military, everything is fucked. Way more fucked than it ever was by the rock from outer space or the fucking zombies.”
Nobody says anything for a while. Karen looks like she’s going to explode. Her hands cover her belly. She’s as infected as I am, as her unborn child is, as is anybody in this room.
“What were the green lights?” Betty asks. She’s hanging on Kevin again. I wonder if he gets to shit by himself.
Tyler shrugs. “An educated guess? Taking coordinates for the attack. Some places, with more people, they’ll round up the inhabitants and take them back to do whatever horrible things they have planned. Little enclaves like us? Probably just take the coordinates, send in some automated ordinance or drones and we’ll all wake up tomorrow blown to smithereens. In fact,” he says looking at his watch, “they’ve probably programmed coordinates in already. We’re just standing here like sitting ducks.”
“Standing like sitting ducks?” Ray asks. ”Hold on. That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Whatever,” Tyler snipes back. The smile is gone. “I’m betting that within the hour, this place will be a crater. You can stick around and see what happens, but I’m out of here. I’d rather take my chances out there in the woods with a few of the zombies running loose than try and stay here and see what the fucking Bank has to offer.”
“I’m staying,” Big Donna says. “You can’t be that cynical about it all. I’m not infected or contaminated or any other damn thing. I’m sick of living like an animal out here in the woods.”
“We’re all animals,” Tyler says as he moves towards the door. “Only difference in animals is that some live in cages and some don’t.” He disappears through the doorway and starts heading for the front gate.
Kevin follows after him to the doorway. “Hang on a minute, man. We’re coming too.” He turns to Betty. “Get your stuff. We’re splitting.”
Ray hustles upstairs without saying much. I motion for Karen and Eddie to follow me. Karen explodes into tears again. Goddamn it. I stop and kneel beside her for a second. “We have to go. There is no other option.”
“That’s not true,” Big Donna says and sits down with a thud on one of the kitchen chairs. “She can stay here with me and we’ll get her som
e proper care for that baby.”
I ignore Big Donna and squeeze Karen’s hand hard enough to hurt her a little. “You need to snap out of it. I can’t make you go, but I can promise you, if you stay here, you die. Even if they do come, they’ll pull that baby out of you and you’ll never see it again. They’ll slice you up six ways to Sunday and that’ll be it.” She doesn’t move but her crying slows down. “I’m taking Eddie to the bunker and the bath house to get as much as we can carry. Get up, go to the bath house, we’ll meet you there. If Tyler’s right, we don’t have much time.”
Big Donna looks worried. “You should reconsider,” I tell her. But she simply folds her arms across her chest and looks away. “Come on, Eddie. Let’s get going.”
I walk out the door and leave them all behind. I assume Eddie is behind me. Down in the bunker, I grab my pack and begin stuffing anything and everything into it. Matches, food, ammo. I fill my canteen with water and grab as many of the wool blankets as I can and head up to the bath house.
Eddie is walking Karen across the courtyard. He’s holding her hand and talking to her quietly. She puts her arm around him and gives him a squeeze. I motion for them to hurry up.
Inside, we load up as much as we can carry. Ray, Kevin and Betty show up just as we are grabbing the last of everything. “We can always come back for more if Tyler’s wrong about them just bombing the shit out of everything,” Kevin says. He’s got the big sniper rifle slung across his back and an AK in his right hand. Betty isn’t carrying much but she does have a shotgun. Ray looks like he’s about to shit his pants.
“Let’s take the tractor,” Ray says. “Or the Jeep. They both still run.”
“Easy targets from the sky,” Tyler says and begins slicing a path through the brown stuff covering the gate.
“We can park them outside,” I tell Tyler. “Use the front end loader to open the road, follow with the Jeep. There’s a house just down the road that I stayed in for a night. We can ditch them there and move out into the woods. At least we’ll have access to them if you’re right. And if you’re wrong, nothing wasted.”
The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree Page 17
