by Geo Dell
September 21st
They next morning they buried Nellie and Molly in the field behind the store. Chloe had spoken the words that no one else felt able to speak.
The SUV was a smoking hulk on the side of the road, but the biker was gone. Bear, Mike and Ronnie, followed a drag trail away from the SUV and into the woods on the other side of the highway. Machine pistols off their straps and in their hands. The forest was quiet. No birds whistled and called to one another, nothing moved. They followed the drag marks nearly a quarter mile back into the woods before they came across the body.
They had expected to see other zombies. Believed that they had come in the night and dragged the biker off, but there were no other zombies. Just the Biker who had turned sometime after he died, come back, and tried to drag himself to safety.
They had heard the noises in the stillness long before they had come upon him. The rough dragging sound popped out of the silence and Bear had raised one hand for them to stop. They had come up on him slowly then, on either side, safeties off. Bear had circled around to the front.
One leg still worked, the other dragged uselessly behind him. But the leg was out of sync with the rest of his body. It kicked and stuttered, scuffing against the pine needles that covered the floor of the forest.
One arm was gone, possibly back at the still smoking SUV, the other, not much more than bones and shredded flesh clutched at the ground to pull him forward. Bear lowered his pistol and blew his head off. The body jumped, then became still. The silence returned even thicker than it had been.
“That's it then,” Ronnie asked.
Bear nodded.
“It doesn't seem enough,” Mike said as he studied the body of the biker.
Bear nodded. “It isn't... But it's what we have... You can't fight the evil... It's gone now.” He toed one shoulder of the biker's body with a heavy work boot, rocking the body as he did. He looked up at Mike.
Mike raised his eyes from the body and caught Bear's eyes. He nodded and they turned and walked back off through the forest.
No one had felt much like loading the other truck with what they had come for, but they had done it anyway. By Late afternoon they had been ready to leave. Chloe and Bear had wandered over to the steep sided ravine after the children had been loaded into the truck. Mike stood with Ronnie, looking down into the pit. The zombies wandered back and forth, nearly silent. Some making strange noises as they went. A few stood and stared back up at them. Tim wandered over.
“Tim... Tell Josh to go ahead, we'll catch up with him in a few miles,” Mike told him. Tim looked from Mike down into the pit and back.
“Gonna waste them,” Tim asked.
Mike met his eyes, but didn't speak. He simply nodded. Tim looked back at the pit and then turned away,. A few seconds later three of the trucks started and left the parking lot. Bear left and came back a few minutes later with two five gallon cans of diesel fuel. He had one of the pumps they used to siphon fuel with him. He pinched off the end, folded the plastic loosely against itself and ran a small piece of duct tape around it to hold it. The result was a very narrow opening for the fuel to escape from . Ronnie slung his own pistol on his shoulder, walked over and began to pump the handle as Bear turned and began to spray the diesel fuel out over the ravine and the zombies. Several zombies fled to the other side of the pit, their eyes wide and frightened.
If they ran, Chloe and Mike cut them down. It was over in just a few minutes. One or two still moved and Bear, who was the better shot, took them out one by one as Chloe took over spraying the fuel and Mike pumped.
When Bear finished the last one he left and came back with a glass jar of gasoline. He had fashioned a hole in the top of the metal lid with his knife. A rag hung from the hole, already wicking the gasoline out of the jar. Chloe pulled the pump from the nearly empty Diesel can and Mike tossed it into the pit. It tumbled end over end, spraying fuel as it went, crashing to the ground. Bear pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the rag. He cocked his arm and launched the jar into the sky.
The jar arced up into the overcast afternoon sky and then plunged down into the pit. A second later the entire pit bloomed into flame, and they found themselves rushing backwards quickly, away from the heat.
They stood as a group and watched the burning for a few seconds and then turned away in mass. They left a few minutes later with a slow, cold rain falling from the gray afternoon sky.
They had driven through they night as if death had been chasing them too, and found the auto plant that they had wanted shortly after dawn.
Chloe had seemed to get a quicker handle on her grief and moved past it. Maybe dealing with the two youngest children and keeping them from dwelling on what had happened had pulled her back from it also, Bear had thought to himself. He has seen different people deal with it in different ways. Not always the way you thought they might.
Ronnie and Mike seemed to be taking it the hardest. Ronnie because Molly had bitten him and caused him to let her go when he had reacted in pain. Mike because he had understood in the last seconds what it was she intended to do and he had been unable to stop her. Her eyes had rested on his for that briefest of seconds and spoken to him. Transmitted her absolute despair. She had said goodbye with that look, and there had been no apology in it. Bear sat and listened to both of them as they spoke quietly after they had stopped in the early morning light. Letting them speak it out, rid themselves of the guilt and poison. It had seemed to help a little. Time would tell though.
Tim, Richard and Josh were also at a loss. With Tim it may have been harder because he had known her, but it seemed equally harder for Richard and Josh because they hadn't. It had happened so fast and it had been so brutal. Not knowing her well just drove home the fact that it could have been anyone, at anytime.
The miles rolling by during the night had taken the immediacy of the pain from them. Of all of them, only Mike, Ronnie and Bear had seen what Molly had done. The others had thought that another shot had taken her. But the truth was not something that could be hidden that easily, and it was not something they intended to hide in any case.
Chloe had come to Mike and spoken of it, cried it out as they had waited through the night. She had told him that she had come close to doing it herself a few months before. She had put the barrel in her mouth, tasted the metallic, oily, biting taste. Felt her tongue contract and pull away from it. She had been unable to do it. She had broken down instead. Cried it out, and the danger had passed. Mike had held her as she worked through her tears. After that she had gone back to the children and seemed to have been able to put it away from her. Mike wished he could do the same. Even talking to Ronnie and Bear had not helped.
Killing the zombies in the pit had seemed to help. It had quieted something inside of him, but he wondered what that said about him. Maybe Chloe was the only one who had handled it correctly, she had cried it out and then went on. The rest of them, he suspected, had stuffed it down inside where it would come back some day to haunt them. Mike was certain of that. It had happened that way with him too many times. It was just a matter of when and how it came back.
The big man, Bear, was a different kind of man. He seemed to operate on some other level. Mike liked him, but he had the feeling that it was a rare event for Bear to let anyone in too close. He had hoped that Bear would share some of his past with them. Help them to understand what the world had become. But Bear's answer seemed to be that it was self evident and required no explanation at all.
They sat now in the falling rain in front of acres and acres of cars and trucks. The plant itself seemed largely untouched. It was surrounded by parking lots that spread out in every direction. At some point there had been a fire in the east and several cars parked in a lot in that direction had exploded and burned. They were long dead fires now though; Just blackened, already rusting hulks in the steady rain.
They were all tired but they cruised from lot to lot with two of the jeeps looking for what they wanted. The
y found it an hour later: Pulled the vehicles together, eying the plant itself warily, and made a breakfast, mainly for the children. The rest of them had been subsisting on power bars, nuts, the travel cakes and smoked meat that Janet had packed.
“Four is all we can do,” Mike said, “and we'll have to leave the Jeeps and the last pickup behind.” They had left one pickup behind already. “We'll pick the best four.” He had had Tim look them over. “These are not dual fueled so we'll have to charge them. We can do that with the converter from the big truck, then we can drive them back... I can't see any other way,” Mike finished. He sipped at his coffee, blowing the steam into his eyes.
“We could use tow bars,” Tim said. “I saw a man who lived in my building do that a few times. He raced a car. He towed it to the track every weekend behind his truck. Set the wheels straight. Locked the ignition. Disconnected the drive shaft and that was that,” he finished.
A small smile touched Mike's face. “That was helpful,Tim.”
Bear nodded. “We passed a place back down the road a few miles where we can get what we need.”
Mike nodded. “Well... Sleep or get this done... I know I've been driving hard... I guess I don't want us to just sit and think.. I just want to finish it and head back.”
“No different for the rest of us,” Bear said quietly.
Mike nodded. “I can't take it out on you guys. I'm sorry.”
“I don't feel any different... Worse for you folks... You knew them. As for the world, well, the blinders are off... Even for me. And I've been living right in it.” He finished so quietly that he may have been talking to himself, Mike thought.
“I say let's get it done,” Ronnie said.
Bear nodded.
Chloe who had come over closer to listen nodded as well. “Let's get it done... Sleep tonight and then head back tomorrow... I don't ever want to come back out here again,” She said.
“Sleep would be good,” Josh agreed.
“Mike nodded. “Okay,” he said slowly.
“We'll never get all the way better if we keep coming back out here,” Tim said.
“Fuck,” Bear said. He lunged to his feet and started toward Chloe. She had glanced off across the parking lot and then turned quickly back and locked eyes with Bear. She turned away and Bear followed her eyes to the highway beyond the parking lot. “Mike... Ronnie... Two trucks... Three trucks... They saw us,” Bear called tightly.
Everyone was instantly on their feet and facing the highway a good distance away where the trucks were emerging from a screening growth of trees and turning down into the parking lot.
The Nation
Toward the end of the third day when the lines were once again packed, they turned to one of the small streams that fed the lake and got out the netting.
Arlene and David on one side, Sharon and Bob on the other. They started a few hundred feet out into the lake where it was still shallow and walked up to the stream where it flowed into the lake. By the time they reached the creek they were bunched closer together and the netting was full and hard to pull. Tom and Cindy jumped in and helped to pull the overflowing netting up onto the grassy bank. Together they dragged it further up the bank, away from the water.
Hundreds of crabs, an equal number of fish, several dozen crayfish, and dozens of small mollusks. The fish went back, except for a few large ones. The Crayfish, mollusks and crabs went into several plastic coolers that were not yet packed with fish. With some fresh water from the lake they would keep for a few days.
“I have never had a crayfish or a mollusk,” Cindy said. She looked doubtful about ever trying one either, Bob thought. He laughed.
“You'll like them... Ever had Squid? Octopus? Part of the family... I'll get this wrong. My brain is not a book like Jan seems to think... But I think it goes like this, they are part of the same species... So are Snails, slugs... Those are Gastropods, the Octopus and Squid are Cephalopods... Same family. People think they only live in the oceans but there are fresh water Mollusks too. Cooked and then dipped in a little butter? Believe me, you will never again look doubtful about eating them. Crayfish? I have not had them in years. People think they don't inhabit northern climates but they are wrong. They are nowhere near as big as their southern cousins are but they are there and they are so good.” He smiled. Cindy still looked doubtful. Bob laughed again.
“No,” Arlene said. “You really will like them. A crayfish is nothing more than a Crawdad... Oysters? Clams? Mollusks too, sometimes called muscles.” She made a muscle with one arm.
“Nope. Never had them,” Cindy said.
“Oh, Honey. You have been sheltered,” Arlene said and laughed. “But, you're gonna love these. And we have so much we can take some back for the others too. Come on, Cindy. Let me show you how we do these.”
While the fish smoked, Arlene, Bob and Cindy worked on the crayfish and mollusks. The crabs were simpler. A large pot was already set upon rocks over the fire, waiting to come to a boil.
They collected fresh leaves from a few nearby maple trees, and dug for some more fresh leeks and radish. They added some clover leaves and used one of Bob's stone knives to chop it all up fine along with two hot peppers they had bought from their own garden. They mixed it with butter and cooked it all together over the fire in a heavy cast iron skillet, then used the mixture to baste the crayfish and mollusks as they were skewered onto sharp sticks. They added chunks of wild carrots and potatoes, pieces of sliced up peppers, and cooked it all on the skewers held over the fire.
They took several more of the crayfish and mollusks, smothered them in the mixture and then wrapped them in the Maple leaves and placed them at the edge of the fire to cook.
“How do you know all of this,” Cindy asked Bob and Arlene.
Bob looked embarrassed. “I read... This stuff is available to anyone who wants to read about it. Some my mother and my mother's mother taught to me.” He looked at the lake. “There are probably clams, eels, pike here as well, also good to eat.” He looked around. “The normal man, or woman,” he added, “would look at this and never see all that is here. Would not realize how much there is to eat. The woods? Herbs, mushrooms, ferns, bark, some leaves, woodchucks, rabbits.” He looked over towards the mountains in the near distance.
“Closer over to the mountains, goats, I mean mountain goats... People don't realize we still have them here. They watch television, or did, and think it's all in some other country, but they are here too. Bear will be there this time of year as well. Getting ready for their long sleep... Fattening up. Probably has a cave there somewhere. Moose... Nutria... More.”
“What's a nutria,” Sharon asked.
Bob smiled. “It's a rat, really, except they are all over in the south... Probably here as well. I've never eaten one but they're supposed to be good. Beaver, Raccoon, wild pigs... You might as well say, what isn't here. Truly everything we could ever use is right here,” Bob concluded.
The conversation died down as everyone began to eat. Several comments of This is good, or I've never tasted anything like this before, punctuated dinner.
“So that's crayfish,” Cindy said. “Sort of like a salty shrimp.”
“Don't get me started on shrimp or we'll be hiking for the coast,” Arlene said with a laugh. “What did you think of the mollusks?”
“I liked them, and I think I was wrong. I did have them once before at a seafood place,” Cindy told her. “They came with something called a seafood platter. A little of this. A little of that. Huge piece of fish and a mound of fries big enough to feed ten people. Fried rice as well. What I remember tasted like that. The same as that,” Cindy finished.
“There are several kinds. The ones on the Gulf are huge. I used to love to go down to the Gulf. The seafood was unbelievable. A salt water mollusk is twice as big... and these were big for fresh water mollusks. I used to like to go down to the docks, Galveston to Mobile, I've been all through there. There are so many places to go. You could buy five gallon buckets
of seafood. I mean huge five gallon buckets of all sorts of stuff. Live... You prepare it and cook it what ever way you want to. You never knew what would be in it. Fish, mollusks, crabs, shrimp, you name it,” Arlene said.
“You've been on the coast a lot,” Cindy asked. “Are the beaches really nice?”
“Some places were, some places weren't. I liked the out-of-the-way places. The commercial places were not my speed, but there are so many little places run by local people. Always good meals... Good seafood, even so what I really liked was the boats. I did a lot of day work on charter boats. Scuba diving. I didn't care, as long as I was on the ocean I was happy. Now? I'll bet the entire Gulf Coast is nice... I want to go there again some day.” She turned wistful.
The conversation went back and forth as the sun sank from the sky. The called the Cave on the radio and got an update from them and promised they would be bringing back enough crayfish, mollusks and crabs for everyone, even those coming. They had enough to feed an army of people, Bob assured Janet. He told her they would be heading back about mid day the next day so they would be back in time for dinner with them.
~
The dogs alerted them before they had even realized anyone was nearby.
Candace, Patty, Lilly and Janet had been standing by the low rock wall that ran along the edge of the ledge, watching the light bleed from the surrounding sky. The sun itself was already setting below the mountains behind them. The Dog and Angel both appeared to be fixed on the lower end of the valley.
They were too far away to be certain, but it appeared there were four of them. They had somehow entered the valley and were following the stream as it meandered across the valley floor.
“Candy,” Janet said quietly. “I think we have visitors.”
