The Human Spring

by Hollingsworth, David

  “Ryan…” Ehsan began. He hesitated, searching for the right words, feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “Ryan, whenever I thought about you, I always thought about the times you broke up fights, and tried to make sure everyone got along. You had your own way of looking at things, just like anyone, but you were always willing to put that aside if it meant keeping the peace. Thanks for making this school feel like a home. You will be missed.” He bowed his head.

  Cecilia stepped forward to speak. “Ryan, to be frank, I did not know you as well as I know other members of this community,” she began. “However, in a way, I knew everything I needed to. Everything everyone has said here is true. You kept the community safe, you made new members feel welcomed, you helped maintain peace. In the process of doing all that, never once did I ever see you take any short cuts. Our continued survival, and everything we will ever accomplish, are in part because of everything you did for us. Our survival will be your legacy. Thank you for everything you gave to us. You have my word that it will not be in vain.”

  Ehsan looked over to Josue after Cecilia finished speaking. He still stared silently at Ryan’s grave. Ehsan hoped he wouldn’t have an episode like the previous night’s.

  “Y’know, I’ve always said that everyone wins when people work together,” spoke up Sarah after a moment of silence from the group. “You were a perfect example of that. You helped make us better. Thanks, my fellow semi-Southerner. I hate that you’re dead, but I hope you at least felt like you had a home here.”

  “You were a good dude,” Deon commented next. “You weren’t perfect, but you cared about your own. You really were a ride or die member of the school, and folks like that ain’t easy to find.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “But, you were also more than what you gave to the group. You were a person with hopes, and dreams, and fears, and it’s fucked up that your candle got snuffed out so soon. I dunno what happens after we die, but I hope you’re at peace right now, wherever you are.”

  Julie stepped forward meekly. “I’m sorry that this won’t be as good as everyone else’s, but thank you for everything you did, Ryan. You sacrificed so much to make everything safe for these kids, just like everyone else. I could never repay everything you’ve done for them. I hope you know what kind of impact you left here. But like Deon said, you were also more than that, too. I’m sorry your life ended so soon. No one should have to go through what you did. Rest in peace.” She turned to Josue and smiled shyly. “Do you have anything you wanna say, Josue?”

  “Yeah.” His face remained stoic, but his eyes, cloudy and strained, betrayed the depth of his sadness. “Ryan, you crazy motherfucker, I can’t believe your ass got killed.” He stopped and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. His words came out as slowly as his breath. “Remember the night I tried to kill myself? We’d been posted at Camp Pendleton before, but we barely knew each other. Didn’t stop you from calling me that night when you thought something was up, though. That’s the kind of motherfucker you were.” He shook his head. “You called 9-1-1 as soon as you heard me babble on about trying to make the nightmares to stop. You saved my life. And I couldn’t even fucking save yours.” His jaw twitched. He pursed his lips. Mateo put his hand on his shoulder. “I th-thought I was done seeing marines die after I came back from Iraq, but I guess not. I failed you, Ryan. I fucking failed. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His eyes welled up. “Rest well, devil dog.”

  “Josue…” Ehsan began.

  “You can’t blame yourself, man,” Mateo said. “It was the zombies who killed him.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Josue responded with a shake of his head. Another couple of tears fell from his eyes. “I shoulda gone out there with him. I was too lazy, and too fucking drunk, like a fucking nineteen year old. If we’d gone out at the same time, I coulda…”

  “Josue, you had no way to know,” Cecilia stated matter-of-factly. She looked him right in his eyes. “You have a choice now, however. All of us do. We can drown in self-pity, or we can work to keep this school, and his legacy, alive. The choice is ours.”

  Josue shook his head. “Whoever’s out there fucked up by messing with us, and they’re fucking dead.” He wiped his tears on his sleeve. “But I fucked up, too. No amount of nice words is gonna change that.”

  The rest of the morning flew by. When Josue discovered the group’s intentions to go through with the plan, he demanded in. Cecilia refused to let him join, but she told him he could do lookout duty that night if he spent the day resting. Cecilia took the students to the library, where she planned to read with them until Julie returned from her part of the mission. Ehsan, Fatima, Mateo, Deon, and Sarah met at the lunch tables.

  “Y’all ready to bring ‘em down?” Deon asked with steely determination as they gathered.

  “You know it,” Mateo replied with a grin.

  Ehsan, Fatima, and Mateo embarked through the front gate of the school while Deon and Sarah snuck off to the shadows. Ehsan’s legs still ached from the previous day, and the movement into the streets filled him with an unspeakable dread. Yet, at the same time, he felt buoyed by having a newly healthy Mateo lead the way, and as he passed the spot where the zombies killed Ryan, part of his fear turned to anger. All of his emotions fought, kicking and punching, clawing and biting, the entirety of the journey to the clinic.

  The three of them moved swiftly. Mateo seemed to want to make up for lost time. The whole way there, Ehsan thought of how Julie would be taking to the streets by herself soon. He couldn’t stand the thought of it.

  “Hey Sis,” Ehsan began, “do you really think we should’ve gone through with using Julie?”

  “It does worry me,” Fatima admitted. “But we should trust Cecilia. Also, now that we know about the modified zombies they have, there will be no surprises.”

  “I guess that’s true.” Her answer didn’t satisfy him, but at this point it seemed too late to do anything about it, regardless of his feelings. The three of them continued, soon reaching their destination. Hector and Ken stood guard. Hector waved as they drew closer.

  “We still doing the plan, I take it?” Hector asked.

  Mateo nodded. “How many boxers do you have here, again?”

  “Six. Me and one other who just did it as a hobby, three amateurs, and Ken. We’re gonna have two of the amateurs and Ken come with you.”

  “Cool,” Mateo replied.

  “By the way, what’s the status of the fishermen? How did they respond to your warning last night?” Hector asked. “We sent people first thing this morning to the fields. They’re holding up okay over there.”

  Ehsan exchanged glances with Fatima. He’d completely forgotten that they saw the destruction of the pier after they’d visited the clinic. He hesitated, unsure of how to phrase the news.

  “The group at the pier… is gone,” Fatima informed them after an uncomfortable silence. Hector’s eyes widened with shock. Ken’s face became even graver.

  “Completely?” Hector asked, massaging his temples.

  Fatima nodded. “No trace of survivors, either.”

  “Well, change of plans, then,” Ken informed them abruptly. “If the pier has fallen, all our bases are in danger. I’ll have Hector come with me instead. We’ll need all our amateur fighters here while I’m gone.” Ken went inside to update the clinic while Hector remained outside.

  “Sorry to hear about Ryan, by the way,” Hector said as the door to the entrance closed behind Ken. “Didn’t have time to say it last night, but I’m sorry about your loss. I hope you’re all doing okay.”

  “Thanks, man,” Ehsan replied.

  “It’s been tough,” Mateo admitted, “especially for Josue. But we’ll be okay.”

  Ken came out minutes later with a hand-written note from Lucero and Juan that read THANKS FOR FIGHTING THE BAD GUYS, WE ARE CHEERING FOR YOU! Ehsan took it and put it in his pocket, smiling. The five of them left the clinic and went to the row of houses just before the clinic. Their plan to scout the nearby area and
check as many houses as possible had officially begun.

  “Where do we even start?” Hector wondered out loud as he scanned the surrounding area.

  “Probably with the mission,” Ehsan joked with a grin. Hector and Mateo chuckled while Fatima smiled.

  “Wow, thanks Ehsan,” Hector replied facetiously. “You should totally be the leader at the school.”

  Everyone smiled except for Ken. He scanned the nearby houses while everyone else spoke. “So where do we begin?” he asked.

  Fatima assumed her trademark thinking pose. “Cecilia said we should go west. The pier is the only place that has fallen so far, so it makes sense that their base would be somewhere in that direction. I think we should search all the houses near the train tracks. I know Cecilia said not to go past there, but perhaps we could also look around Coast Highway as well.”

  Ehsan grinned. “You just wanna go shopping, don’t you?”

  Once more, everyone smiled except for Ken. The group walked to the nearest house not located along their normal route between the clinic and the school. Ken led the way, followed by Mateo, then Ehsan and Fatima, then finally Hector. Ehsan held his breath as they approached the door. Ken gingerly put his hand to the door and cautiously opened it. The group entered, with Ehsan, Fatima, and Mateo tapping their weapons against the wall. Nothing. Ken and Hector searched upstairs while Ehsan and Fatima searched downstairs. Mateo went outside to keep an eye out for Julie. All they found of interest were the small rations of canned food the community had decided to put inside some of the houses.

  Every house on the street produced similar results. The group moved to the next street, a full block from their normal path. It felt odd to Ehsan to be off-route. He thought again of Ryan lying face down in front of the school. His mind then went to Julie. Just when he was about to ask about sending one of them down the street to go watch her as she came up the part of the street Sarah and Deon wouldn’t be able to see her, however, Ken went to open the door to the house in front of them. The door was locked.

  “Weird,” Mateo commented.

  “What’s weird?” Ehsan asked.

  “We only lock the doors of the houses that have the walkways. We’ve left every other house we’ve been to unlocked, and I know we’ve been to this one.”

  “Shit.”

  “Let’s get it open,” Ken decided. He turned to Hector, the largest person of the group. “You got this, Hector?”

  Hector nodded, but Mateo stepped forward before Hector could. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle this,” Mateo declared. He grinned. “This is a firefighter’s specialty, after all.”

  Mateo gently tapped along the edge of the door a few times with his axe. “Here,” he muttered to himself, motioning to the area just above the knob with the bottom of Nimbus. He raised the weapon over his head and brought it down on the area he’d just pointed to, shattering the wood and metal behind it. He then raised his right leg and brought down the door with a thunderous push kick. Ehsan could see why Fatima had a crush on him.

  Mateo stormed in with Nimbus at the ready, Ken right behind him. Mateo tapped the walls. They heard nothing. They decided to search the house with far more care than usual. Ehsan and Fatima stood at the front of the house, with Ehsan keeping watch at the porch and Fatima keeping watch inside the doorway a few feet behind him. Ehsan scanned the street for any sign of threats, as well as Julie. Mateo, Ken, and Hector searched the rest of the house.

  “I’m not sure whether I should be more worried for Julie or for us,” Fatima said, clutching her knife as she looked over Ehsan’s shoulder into the street.

  Before Ehsan could reply, he heard Mateo from inside. “It’s more writing!” he called downstairs to Ehsan and Fatima. They raced upstairs to find another message on the wall. I MUST FIND OTHERS LIKE ME. Next to it was another map of the area. This one included not only the school and clinic, but the pier and the fields.

  “This is fucking bizarre,” Mateo said. Ehsan studied the writing on the wall in greater detail. It looked the same as the writing they had found three days before: written in crayon, sloppy but not child-like. A cold shiver shot through Ehsan’s body.

  “What does it even mean?” Hector wondered, exasperated.

  “Probably some psycho who thinks he needs to find more ‘misunderstood geniuses’ like himself,” Fatima guessed.

  “Sounds like a typical Youtube commenter,” Ehsan quipped clumsily, wanting everyone to think the writing hadn’t unsettled him.

  “What do you think this says about whoever’s out there?” Ken asked Fatima.

  “I see three possibilities,” Fatima answered. “Option one is what I said a moment ago. A lone asshole who somehow got these zombies the way they are, and has some sort of plan to use them to find ‘others like him,’ whatever that means. Option two assumes that the author is part of a group. In this scenario, he wrote it because he wants to escape, but he has no means to. He wants to ‘find others like him’ in the sense that he wants to find people other than those murderous psychopaths with him.” She assumed her thinking pose. “The third option is, whether a single person or a group, they wrote this to deliberately confuse us.”

  “Spouting nonsense to make us overthink everything,” Ken elaborated.

  Fatima nodded. “And perhaps make us miss something else in the confusion.”

  “So where do we go from here, then?” Mateo asked. “All three options mean pretty different things for us.”

  “I think we should tell Cecilia and go from there,” Fatima decided. “In the meantime, however, I believe we should search beyond the tracks to see if we find anything out of the ordinary. I recommend we also expand our search east of our usual walkway route, not just west of it like we are now. If they are trying to distract us here, it makes me wonder if they are trying to hide something elsewhere.”

  “There’s a library here in Rancho Madero,” Mateo told Fatima. “If we wanna go in that direction, maybe we could check there. It’s one of the biggest buildings around, we even had it prepped as an evacuation site if the school ever fell, but we haven’t been for a long time. It’s a few blocks east of here, near the 5 freeway.”

  “That seems like a good place to check out,” Fatima agreed. “We should be cautious, though, considering how long it has been since anyone has been in the area. We will have to be extra stealthy.”

  “Quiet, in a library?” Ehsan quipped. “I never thought-”

  A loud, piercing scream outside interrupted Ehsan’s joke.

  Ehsan’s thoughts snapped right back to Julie. They heard another scream, however, and it didn’t sound like her. Ehsan rushed to the window so quickly that he hit his forehead against the glass when he reached it. As he massaged his forehead he peered through and immediately recognized the kids from the clinic in the street. Two adults accompanied them. One of them, a woman with light brown skin and long black hair, somewhere in her early thirties and wearing nursing scrubs, carried Andrea in her arms while Lucero and Juan ran by her side. The other was one of the boxers, purposefully lagging behind the woman while glancing over his shoulder. Only a few feet behind him four zombies sprinted after them. They were catching up. The boxer turned around and punched one in the forehead, causing it to fall, but the other three pounced on him. Ehsan’s blood froze and his feet went numb. This time the thought of Ryan lying face down on the ground didn’t just momentarily pop into his mind, but stayed there.

  “Tim!” Ken shouted. He rushed downstairs without a second thought, Mateo right behind him.

  Hector and Ehsan exchanged nervous glances. “Those the sprinters?” Hector muttered.

  Ehsan nodded. Fatima shook him. “Come on Ehsan, we need to help them!”

  Ehsan nodded once more, reflexively, wanting more than anything not to move. His stomach felt like a blackhole. They jogged downstairs to help, Ehan’s mind still trapped in the scene of finding Ryan outside. By the time the three of them made it outside, the boxer who had stopped to fight the zombies had
already fallen. The four sprinters descended upon his corpse, gorging themselves on his flesh with such furious gluttony that they had no awareness of the world around them. Ehsan dropped Dragon Hair as soon as he saw the carnage.

  Fatima put her hand on Ehsan’s back. “Ehsan, remember what Cecilia did to that sprinter last night. We will be alright, as long as we are careful.” She turned to Hector as Ehsan, shaking, picked up his shovel. “Hector, stay with the kids.”

  Ehsan grasped Dragon Hair and looked over to Ken and Mateo, who ran full speed toward the sprinters. Three of the sprinters seemed too occupied with their meal to notice, but one stood up and started sprinting toward the two of them. Ehsan and Fatima jogged in the same direction.

  “This one’s mine,” Ken declared. Mateo nodded and slowed down, allowing Ken to meet it head on. He and the sprinter charged straight toward each other. Just when the two were about to collide, Ken darted to the left and rapidly, effortlessly pivoted on his left foot while throwing a left hook to the jaw of the zombie. The punch didn’t have an incredible amount of force behind it, but Ken placed it with such precision that the zombie hit the earth like a sack of bricks. It didn’t get back up.

  Ehsan’s jaw dropped. He and Fatima caught up to Mateo. He looked over to the three sprinters still feasting on the deceased boxer and noticed something in the corner of his eye. He looked further up the street to see a herd of about thirty zombies walking their way.

  “Shit,” Ehsan grunted as everyone else looked up the street.

  “You finish those three,” Ken instructed Mateo, Ehsan, and Fatima as he motioned toward the three sprinters. “I’m gonna get past them and save the clinic.”