Samantha's Song

by David Carroll

  That was a good question why did I care? Actually, I knew why I cared. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew. I was in the dark. I was in the middle of a situation that I didn’t understand, and I had no clue how I was going to get us out alive. I didn’t know who my enemies were, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something larger than this kidnapping drama was going on. Were these Head Hunters involved in the bigger picture? Not knowing what I was looking at made it near impossible to see the path that we should take. I couldn’t figure out what plan to draw up if I didn’t know what I was trying to accomplish. This was the first time since all of this happened that I was caught up in some form of crisis where I didn’t know what the ultimate goal was. Living in the dark is scary and it gets the tension and paranoia bugs crawling deep under your skin. There was no reason I should ever question Amanda, but here I was getting ready to play Daniel’s role as group asshole and have a pissing contest with her. And over what? It could be over something as silly as her thinking if I knew that there was a group of zombies pacing us on the main road then I might take us on some new short cut to safety that would possibly put us in even more danger.

  Marky Mark was passing me up now and he looked to me like I had lost my mind.

  “Sup Charlie, you’se feelin okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just looking for Big Lou. He wandered off while we were eating.” Marky Mark, buying the lie, nodded at me and kept following Amanda and Sass towards the corner of the building. I continued to stand there looking out at the parking lot and heard a sigh come from my right.

  “You know what your biggest problem is?” Jane asked.

  I looked at him expecting to see him smiling at me and about to crack a joke to try and ease my mind, but he was frowning at me.

  “What would that be, Jane?” I said bracing myself for a possible fight with him. It would be a fight that I wanted no part of.

  “You always have to know.” He said.

  “I what?”

  “You always have to know everything. You have to always be in the loop. You always have to be a part of what’s going on.”

  “I do not.” I said catching a glimpse of movement a few rows deep in the parking lot.

  “Really? Tell me something Charlie. Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to help save Fred’s little girl.” I answered, curious as to where he was going with this.

  “I don’t think that’s entirely why you’re out here. I don’t think that is entirely why you have all of us out here. This isn’t about that little girl. This is about Charlie and his desire to have another adventure.”

  I should have felt my anger rise at this. I should have felt the heat of my rage coming to the surface and prepare to launch it at this old man who dared question me. I should have felt these things, but all I felt was tired. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to have this fight with Jane. He may have been expecting me to attack him, but that wasn’t what he got. What he got was a little sigh.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked without even looking over at him. I was trying to catch another glimpse of Lou as he wandered the cars of the parking lot.

  “You are our leader Charlie. To put yourself at risk like this goes against everything I ever learned. You are supposed to make the decisions and we are supposed to carry them out.”

  “Do you think that I haven’t made good decisions today?”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t. There is no reason why we should even be here. This is not our mess. Samantha is a sweet kid and I love her as much as the next guy, but Fred took her from her mom and here we are saying that he was right to do it.”

  “They invaded our home. They could have been civil about the problem, but they weren’t. They are nothing but thieves.”

  “And what are we? Are we heroes? Are we the sheriff of this town with our big white hats heading towards those bad guys who are hold up in the hospital?”

  “Yes. We are the good guys. We are going down to the Med Center to set things right.”

  “Charlie, has it ever occurred to you that Fred’s just as much a kidnapper as these other fellers are? He took her in the dead of night. That woman woke up and her daughter was gone. Sam’s mom had no clue where she was or even whether she was dead or alive. How do you think that felt?”

  “Fred said he had his reasons. She beat the girl.”

  “Yeah, I heard that sob story he told us. But what you just said is the whole point of this talk. Fred said that. That’s all the proof we have. Just because Fred said it doesn’t mean it’s true. I don’t have to tell you the reasons he would have had to lie to us.”

  Jane had just voiced the question of the day. “What would Fred have to gain by lying to us?” Jane was under the assumption that Fred was still trustworthy and that he would lie to us so we would help him get his kid back. But I had been past that line of thought since before the sun rose. In my eyes Fred had his own agenda.

  “You’re telling me that I’m the only one wanting to do this? I am the only one that wants to help Samantha?” I asked.

  “No. And that’s the problem. Sass is too emotional, and he sees things as black and white. In his mind they are the bad guys, we are the good guys. Saddle up and ride. That’s who Sass is. Marky Mark is, well, I swear that man had to be some type of enforcer for the Mafia. He just wants to beat on some zombies, he don’t care above that. Amanda is going crazy. She was still active in the military and was used to running undercover ops all over the globe. She is used to that excitement and danger and now her life only has that in spurts at best. I imagine the idea of trying to get into that hospital looks like Christmas morning to her. None of those three are impartial. Fred, also, isn’t impartial, we know that. You should be impartial, you’re the leader, but you’re not. You let your damn emotions take control again instead of being smart. I know you have the intelligence to understand what is going on. I know you can see this for what it is, but still you ignored that rational line of thought to make a Ghostbusters reference. A reference, I might add, that I’m not even sure everyone got. You made a decision based on an emotional reaction to the situation instead of an honest appraisal of the facts of the situation. I am the only impartial person out here and the further we go down this road the worse things are looking for us. You aren’t making smart decisions. You aren’t even acting like yourself. You’re more withdrawn, living in your own head. The smartass comments and the useful insights are gone. Think about it, the biggest decision you have made since we escaped that horde of zombies was that we should take a break so you could eat a pop tart.”

  “Wait just a second Jane. I’m the one that thought up the distraction that got us into this parking lot. You’re saying that wasn’t as big a deal as eating a pop tart?”

  “Wow. You had me zip tie a stick of dynamite to an arrow. A arrow that you almost didn’t shoot. That isn’t an idea, that’s a rip off of Bo and Luke Duke.”

  He was right. I knew he was right. Everything he was saying had merit to it. The question was, were we too far into the mess to escape it now? I was afraid that the answer was yes. My eyes widened as Big Lou strolled out into the middle of the lane in front of where I stood and looked at me. He looked from me to where the rest of the group was and wandered between the cars on the left side of the lane. Hearing this from Jane made me realize a very basic truth of the situation that we were now in. I needed to talk to somebody. I needed to come clean about my suspicions and talk it out. Keeping all of this bottled up in my head was slowly consuming me mentally. I was going to end up getting myself or somebody else hurt. I am sure that Jane had this thought already and that is what led to our talk. He was trying to remove my head from my ass, and if that was the case Mr. Bradshaw, mission accomplished.

  That only left the question of who do I confide in? It had to be just one person. I don’t know why I felt like I had to play this one very close to the chest, but I did, and I knew when you have that kind of feeling it is best to act on i
t. It had to be either Jane or Amanda. Who would be the better person to tell? I would have to give this more thought, but I would have to decide soon. Jane and I had grown close over the last couple of months, and Amanda and I had this strange dance we had been doing since day one of living in this mad house. We would skirt right up to the edge of making a move that would cement us as a couple and then we would both cool down and we would slip away from that edge of relationship and slide safely back into the friend zone. It was a dance we both knew the steps to very well by now. I guess I would have to look at this situation like that old question, “If you could only trust one person in this entire world with your life, who would it be?” If I could only trust one person with my life there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the one person would be Miss Amanda Asare. She had to be the one I went to with this. Heck she was probably having her own misgivings about the situation as well. She and I did think alike, and I suspected that everything I was going to tell her would be echoing in her own head. Amanda had to be the one. Amanda was the one I needed. Amanda was also the one giving Jane and I a very irritated look.

  “Looks like the talks over, Charlie. Amanda does not look happy with us.”

  “No, she certainly does not.” I said with a smile.

  Amanda and the others, and even Big Lou, were already at the point where the building turned back onto itself. She was waiting on us to make it up to where they were before moving forward.

  “She is so gonna kick your ass.” Jane said to me as we started walking towards them.

  “Me? You’re the one that said, and I quote, ‘we will be in constant movement.’ Only thing I’ve seen movement from, for the last few minutes, is your mouth.” Jane gave me his evil sideways glance as we passed the front doors to HH Gregg and said, “Now you know how we feel about you every day.”

  I shot him a look, but he just nodded at me. We walked in silence a bit longer before I said, “That was cold.” All Jane could do was laugh that whispery laugh he has.

  FIFTEEN

  “Now that we are all together again I would like to explain the next leg of this trip. Until now we have been walking near bigger stores. They are built a bit differently than the ones we will be passing now. The rest of the shops in this complex are going to be the type that have windows across their fronts. There are, more than likely, going to be zombies in these buildings and they are going to want to get to us. They will begin beating on the windows in an attempt to get free, but as long as we keep moving we have nothing to worry about. These are not regular windows. They are safety glass and it will take them some time to beat their way out. That being said, we keep moving. We stay safe. Are we ready?” Amanda said.

  Nobody answered her, we all looked around at each other and Jane nodded to Amanda when I turned to look at him.

  “Nobody stops until we reach the end of the building.” Amanda said looking directly at Jane and me. “Do we understand?”

  Still nobody said anything in the maybe five seconds that she gave us to speak before turning around and heading down the sidewalk. I fell back into my spot directly behind Amanda, and I did my best to walk evenly with her. We were walking beside a shop called Lifeway as I leaned towards her and said, “I really think that we should talk.”

  Her voice was cold as she answered, “We have nothing to talk about, at least not right now.”

  By the sound of her voice she thought I was still fishing around for whatever she was keeping secret from me.

  “Look it’s not what you think.” I said.

  “I thought we had come to an understanding about this.”

  “We have, this isn’t about that. I need to talk to you about this whole thing. The why’s and who’s of this walk we are all taking.”

  Amanda looked over to where I was walking and seemed to appraise me. I can only imagine that she was trying to figure out whether I was on the up and up or whether this was a new ploy to try to get her talking so I could sneak up on the secret that she didn’t want to tell me. Her decision came quickly, but by her words I couldn’t decide what that decision had been.

  “Do you really think that now is the best time?” She asked me.

  “I need to talk to you about this before we reach the Med Center.”

  “Fine, we will, but there is plenty of road between here and there and just now I think we should all be paying more attention to our surroundings. This place isn’t safe by any measure.”

  She was right, and her tone told me she knew she was right; discussion on the subject was closed. I quit trying to coax Amanda into conversation and instead looked out ahead of us. The shopping center stretched out a very good distance. This was no small undertaking. I began reading the names of the shops coming up. We were passing a place called Bella Donna and several more shops down from us I saw the big sign that read Petsmart.

  I used to watch this show on cable that was called “Life Without People.” On this show they would examine what would happen to everything else on the planet in every single human being just suddenly went “poof” and disappeared. I remember one show was talking about the house pets that were strictly indoor pets. It said that these animals would be all but doomed if they couldn’t find a way to get out of the house. It was a matter of nourishment. Food would be available, at least for a while, but water would be the downfall of these pets. If they were big enough to open the toilet then they would be okay for a while, but the end would still be coming for them. This got me thinking about how many animals and people would die due to the zombie invasion. How many animals and young children were trapped in houses or cars with no grownups ever coming to let them out? I guess now that we were four months into the invasion the better question would have to be how many had died in that situation? But the horror of the situation didn’t stop there. Sure, homes and vehicles were two places where I am sure casualties did mount up but what about all of the prisons littering our landscape? How many people died locked away in their prison cells because anybody that could have opened those cell doors, and given them at least a chance at survival, had been consumed or ran for the hills. I really don’t think any guards would have risked their lives in order to get those doors swinging open before they focused on getting free of the building and safely out of harm’s way.

  Could you imagine the hell of that situation? Being locked in a cell with no food and only a very small amount of drinkable water. There would be no illusions in that situation, you know how you’re going to go out. You're going to sit there in your cage counting the days until you die of starvation. You can spend your time hoping that somebody comes and saves you, but you know nobody will. There will be no cavalry riding over the hill at dawn. Quite possibly there are zombies roaming the halls of the jail doing everything they can to get into the cells and feed on the prisoners. How long do you think you would have to sit there before the prospect of letting a zombie bite a hunk off you would start looking like a good thing? How hungry would you have to be to start thinking that being one of them would be better than being forced to live in that hell?

  Prisons would be where the most abandoned adults would perish, and homes are where the most abandoned pets would die. Where would the most abandoned children lose their lives? Would it be in hospitals? Think about the babies lying in their bassinets waiting for the nurse to come back to check on them or to take them to their mothers to be fed. They would not go quietly, but they would go, and they wouldn’t make it anywhere near as long the prisoners. The halls would echo with their cries while the dead did their best to beat their way through the locked hospital doors that would lead to the crying appetizers. I imagine the nonstop cries, which would echo down the halls with the fierceness of the abandoned, would be almost enough to send a zombie into a total, out of their mind, frenzy. I can see the dead eating through the doors like beavers looking for dam building materials. Whether they got through the doors or not, those babies and any surviving children in the pediatric wing would never be leaving the ho
spital.

  As well, think about all of the schools in your home city. That’s nothing but an “all you can eat” destination for the dead. Room after room packed full of as many kids as the state could legally cram in there. It would be a blood bath. I’m sure some of the teachers would try to save their kids, but I am also sure that their efforts would be met with equal and opposite horror as the zombie wave crested and fell upon them. The only place that I can think of that might be close to the kid casualties of the schools would be daycares. At least in the schools some of the kids would have the ability to strike out on their own and take a stab at survival, daycares not so much. It wouldn’t be an “all you can eat” destination, but it would definitely be a buffet.

  What about the elderly? The assisted living homes would be nothing more than room after room of finely aged snacks once the nurses and techs ran from the outstretched arms of the dead. If the zombies didn’t make it inside the facility these people would be no better off. Most are not able to be mobile or take care of themselves. If they were in the bed when the staff fled, then they would never be able to get back out. They would simply lie there till they died. How many other places were there like these around the planet that I just didn’t know about? How many little hidey holes are there around the globe where people are powerless to change their situation? This line of thought was more depressing than I had expected, and I forced myself to focus on something else. I decided to pay more attention to my surroundings.

  We were passing the store that started this entire line of thought and the next sign I could make out was Bed Bath and Beyond. This is one of the stores that Amanda had spoken about. Windows dotted the front of the building. This was designed to let people see the tempting items that they had for sale which would make your bedroom so much more comfortable or your bathroom look just oh so perfect. It was always the beyond that got my attention. I wanted to go in there and ask them what they had for a dungeon. “What’s new in wall shackles or cat of ninetails this year my good man? My beyond room is in need of some shaping up!” or how about, “I am looking for a beanbag chair filled with water and little fish. Nothing says beyond like lounging on a malleable fish tank.” I have a feeling that I would leave the store disappointed in the product offerings from the “beyond” departments.