by Geo Dell
The walk down the hill was pleasant. The air became even cooler as they descended into the valley that held the small city, the scents of the living clearer. He stopped near a crumbled store front on the outskirts of the city itself. A crossroads, or what had been a crossroads. The others stopped behind him. Waiting.
The main road stretched away into the city itself. To the left and right the buckled and overgrown blacktop stretched away. He said nothing, but those behind him began to divide into groups, some to the left, some to the right. A few minutes later, the cold blue moonlight shining off the cracked and tilted roadway, they started on their individual ways. A few minutes after that the intersection was empty, as though they had never been there at all.
~
She ran from the doorway of a falling down building, one of the several that sat at the crossroads, the children under her arms and pressed closely to her. They were really too big to carry, and she would not be able to run for long with them, but she had to put as much distance between herself and the dead ones as she could, and the kids could never keep up with her...
She had not heard them come, but she had sensed something wrong, the way any mother will, and she had crept to the front of the crumbling building and peeked out the shattered window, hiding herself in the shadows as she did. They were everywhere. She had nearly screamed aloud in her fear, but managed to reign it in because she knew it would lead to discovery. They would come for her, and if they came for her whether the kids hid or not they would be finished. They couldn't survive without her. She had clamped one hand across her mouth and faded back farther into the shadows.
At first she had refused to look again. Afraid that they would somehow know she was watching. But she couldn't stand not knowing where they were and what they were doing. Were they, even now, creeping toward the building? Was one peering through the shattered glass and into the shadows where she was hidden? Her eyes flew open. No, but she had nearly convinced herself that it was true. She crept forward once more to the shadows at the front of the old building and the windows there. They had stood motionless in the road. A vast group. Several hundred. Maybe more than a thousand. Maybe more than that.
Some did not look dead at all, they seemed almost as alive as anyone else. The differences were there though. You could not put that many living people in one place and maintain absolute silence. Humans... Living humans, she had amended... Were these still humans, she had then asked herself? She pushed her own question aside. She didn't really care. The point was humans... Her kind of humans, would not be that silent. Would not be able to be that silent.
This crowd had stood stock still. Hands dangling at their sides. They looked stupid, but she knew they were far from stupid. She had been watching. They were also not really very smart, far from it. She had watched them stand still and wait while someone lined up a rifle or pistol and shot them. Wasn't that stupid? To her way of thinking it was. But when she had thought about that she realized it had been some time since she had actually seen that happen. No. They were smarter than that now. Not as fast or smart as a human... There was that word again, but didn't it mean that there was something about them that she didn't consider human? Something in them that bothered her so much that she could not look at them as humans? Something...
She had watched, careful not to make any noise. The children were in the back, in an old freezer room. A heavy steel door closed and locked with a padlock. Even now they could be calling out to her and she would not know. And that meant that the Zombies also would not know. Could not know. She hoped that they were not upset. Not worried. That they had not missed her, but she had been relieved that she had thought to close and lock the freezer door. It had occurred to her then though, that if anything happened to her they would die in that freezer. No one would know they were there. No one would come for them. They would be frightened, scared... She had pushed it away and watched the dead where they stood, hands dangling, faces blank. They looked stupid. They looked stupid, dammit, and they should be stupid! But they weren't.
She had watched from the shadows as a few minutes later they had begun to move away. No words passed between them. They made very little noise even in their leaving. Feet scuffing against the roadway, their clothes rustling slightly. No more than a whisper on the wind, and she had wondered what it was that had bought her from her steel prison in the first place... Intuition? Had to be.
She had waited a few moments after they were gone. The moonlight was cold. Her breath fogged lightly on the air. She was terrified, she found. Still terrified, she corrected. She had taken to doing that. Correcting her own words as if she were someone else. She had worried at first that it could mean she was going crazy, but she had decided that it didn't matter if she was crazy or not; didn't matter in this world because the entire world was crazy. So what was the problem with a little more crazy? None, she had decided. She could go on correcting herself forever.
Her heart still hammered in her chest. Hard... Bam... Bam... Bam... it's a good thing they had not been able to hear it.
She had looked out at the road. Empty. Not a sound, but something bothered her about it. If they knew she was here they would come back: They would. And if they were gone it would be best to leave right now. Not wait until they came back and found her... Killed her, she modified. Yes... Killed her. And the kids... Or leave them to starve to death in the old freezer... Or... Could they figure out the lock mechanism? Could they? They were smarter, but were they that much smarter? Maybe they were. Maybe...
She had turned and run to the freezer. Panicked. Knocking aside a stack of boxes as she went. The crashing of boxes loud in the silence. More than loud. Overwhelming. Sending her into a frenzy. She nearly snapped off the key getting it in the lock. Her breath coming hard and fast. Creating pain behind her ribs. That sharp pain she associated with running too hard for too long. And her breaths were shallow, hard to pull; hurt to pull. She couldn't seem to get enough air. And then the key had slid home, she had twisted the padlock, shot it from the door and let it fall to the floor.
The kids had been sleeping, but they had come awake quickly as she pulled them from the floor and began dressing them.
“But mommy, I'm sleeping... I'm tired,” Danny had complained.
Jessie had just stared blankly. Blinking her eyes and looking around.
“Honey,” she had told Danny, “We got to go... We got to... Don't fight me, Baby. Give me your foot.”
“Is it the dead guys,” Jessie had asked quietly, her eyes serious. She had held Jennies eyes and refused to let them go.
“Yes, Baby. Yes. Now come on. Get yourself dressed for mommy... I have enough with your brother. Get dressed, we got to go.”
Jessie had nodded and began to dress herself. She had turned to Danny as she dressed “'member them dead guys,” She had asked him.
He had stopped squirming and looked seriously at his older sister. “Yeah,” he had breathed.
“Well they might get us if you don't hurry up... Making mamma take too much time... They eat little boys first too.” She had turned away and began to tug on her sneakers. Danny had stopped fighting and had actually begun helping.
“Wrap your arms around Mommy and hold tight,” Jennie had told them. She had been a big woman just a few months ago, now she was maybe a hundred pounds. Maybe it would make her faster, but she didn't believe her own words, and the little voice inside her head continued to chatter along about running in boots, and she should have changed to sneakers, and... She had shut it down, peered out through the shattered window at the still and empty road. Jessie had reached down and turned the knob on the door for her, and she had stepped back and the door had swung inward. A minute later and she was running through the shadows at the edge of the road. A deep stitch in her side.
~
He came from the shadows and chased her down. It was so easy. One of the things that had been slow to change, but amazing to him once it did, was strength and endurance. There seemed
to be no real limits or end to his energy. Something in the way this body used energy as opposed to the way the old body had. It was exhilarating, and thrilling too, as he nearly instantly outpaced her and came up alongside her. The fear, the stench of living flesh. It was overpowering. It could drive him crazy if he allowed it, but he would not allow it. He reached out, enfolded her in mid stride, and threw her to the ground.
The Nation
Josh looked over the high meadow before he lead the sheep and goats down into the first Valley. The dogs went with them and refused to leave them. The male dog seemed to be determined to mark every square foot of what he considered his new territory with his scent.
Down below the notch, with its entrance to the cave and the ledges, the trucks were unloaded with care. It was still early morning, quite some time until the mid day meal, so they had begun unloading the trucks first.
To the children it was like Christmas. Not only were there new and exciting things to see, touch and feel-Rain had ended up with a handful of wool as she had grabbed at a passing sheep-there were also new people to meet. A lot of new people.
They decided to use three large, dry rooms off the main meeting room to store the materials from the three big trucks, but they quickly filled up. Everything else that was easily transportable went into one corner of the huge living area of the main cave instead.
Bob spied the harvester and asked whose idea it had been. Mike pointed him to Josh and told him that Josh had been a farmer. Bob walked up to him and shook his hand heartily.
“Man, do I want to have a few dozen conversations with you,” Bob told him.
Josh laughed. “Good to meet you, Bob.” He turned and looked down the length of the valley. “Nice... Very nice,” he said.
In the distance the horses, cows and bison could be seen. The barns. The stone houses set back close to the sloping valley walls.
Bob smiled as Josh looked around. “When you're settled in I'll show you around,” he told him.
“Well, Bob, I don't have a thing to myself... Nothing to settle in,” Josh told him.
“Well, let's go then,” Bob told him. He turned and Josh followed him down the ledge and into the valley.
Mike stood next to Candace and watched them walk down toward the valley floor. Ronnie and Amy stood nearby. “Looks like the bridges are up... The corn's in too?” Mike asked her.
“Yep and yep, Baby,” Candace told him. She had his hand in her own two critically examining it. She sighed and looked up, meeting his eyes. “We've been busy. Me and the babies have missed you so we've had to stay busy. Sandy grounded me though because I've gotten so big,” she added. She watched his face.
“Grounded,” he asked, and a split second later. “Babies?”
Candace grinned. “Babies,” she agreed.
His mouth hung open. “I don't even know what to say,” he told her.
“Say, I love you,” she told him.
“I love you,” he told her and pulled her to him. He kissed her hard.
“Wow. That was nice. Maybe you should go away more often,” Candace told him. She plucked at his hand. “Except this.” She looked at the bandaged hand and shook her head. “You have to let Sandy see this.”
“No... No more going away. I'm never going back out there,” he assured her.
Amy and Ronnie moved over closer to them. Amy's eyes were bright and she held Ronnie’s arm tightly to her.
Candace looked at Ronnie’s nose. “Nice,” she said, and cut her eyes back and forth between Ronnie and Mike. “Him short a finger and you with a smashed up face.”
“Man meets dashboard,” Ronnie told her.
“Looks pretty bad,” Candace told him.
“Yeah? Well, you should see the dashboard,” Ronnie said.
“I believe I owe you an ass kicking, my man tells me,” Amy said to Mike.
Ronnie pretended to look up at the sky.
“How come you have an ass kicking coming, Baby,” Candace asked him.
“Uh, I'm the guy that broke his nose,” Mike asked?
“You're not sure if you were the guy that broke his nose,” Candace asked? “Maybe it was the Nose Fairy?”
Mike laughed. “No... It was me. I confess, but it was an accident. I'm sorry for it... Truly.”
“Good for you,” Amy said.
“Yeah,” Candace agreed. “You do not want to mess with a hormonally unbalanced woman."
“I think she can take you,” Ronnie said.
“Oh, good, soup her up, Ronnie. Soup her up,” Mike said. He laughed and the others joined in. “But really, Aim, it was an accident. I'm sorry about it, but it was an accident.”
“I know,” Amy told him. “I just had to see you crawl a little.”
“Hello,” a strikingly beautiful woman said as she hobbled up. She was leaning on a stick. Her black hair was straight and long, hanging well below her shoulders. She was no more than five feet tall. Her face unlined, concealing her age, a smile resting on her full mouth. Her skin a light brown.
“Oh, Jess, you shouldn't be up,” Mike said, turning to her as she walked up.
“I gave myself permission,” Jessie told him.
“Jessie,” Mike said as he turned and looked from Candace to Amy. “Jess, my woman, Candace. And my friend Amy, Ronnie's woman. Ladies this is Doctor Jessie Stone.”
Sandy over heard the introduction from just a few feet away and hurried over with Susan.
“This is Sandy and her woman Susan. Sandy is our nurse. She's been doing all of our Doctor stuff,” Mike said.
Everyone said their hellos and Jessie turned to Candace.
“I wanted to meet you, Candace. I have heard so much about you. You're a very lucky woman, you know... Your Mike, he saved my life. Truly and completely,” Jessie said.
Candace sensed that several things were being said at the same time. It made her slightly uncomfortable, but she took Jessie’s hand and clasped it in her own. “It's nice to meet you, Jessie. Mike told me all about you,” she said. She was suddenly disconcerted. She felt she had missed something. Something simple, yet serious
Jessie's eyes lifted and settled on Mike for a moment. It was brief, but it told Candace everything she needed to know. This woman had some sort of feelings for her man. Something that obviously wasn't returned, or there would be no need for her to tell her how lucky she was.
She smiled again as Jessie's eyes left Mike and rested on her briefly on their way to Sandy. She would have to ask Mike about it later, because the thing was, he had told her almost nothing at all about Doctor Jessie Stone. And nothing at all about the woman he seemed comfortable calling Jess. She pushed it from her mind.
“Sandy,” Jessie said. “Maybe you could show me around? ... You too Susan, of course.”
“A doctor,” Sandy said. She seemed flustered.
Jessie laughed. “From what I have heard, you are the doctor here. Believe me. I've heard only good things about you, Sandy,” Jessie said. She turned to Susan. “And you. I heard you are learning... Have learned a great deal.” She smiled at the tall, beautiful black woman and Susan smiled back.
“What do you want to see first,” Sandy asked? She was still flustered.
“Well, the golf course first, I guess. I hope it's a good one,” She said dead pan.
Susan laughed aloud and took the smaller woman’s hand in her own. Sandy's face froze between a laugh and surprise.
Jessie patted Sandy's arm. “Kidding... I thought you would expect the golf course joke,” Jessie said. All three of them laughed and Jessie turned back to Candace and Amy. “It was good to meet both of you,” She said. “Mike.” She nodded at him and then turned and walked slowly away with Sandy and Susan, up the ledge toward the main cave area and the clinic Sandy and Susan had set up.
Amy's eyes slid to Candace. She knew that Candace knew. She missed nothing. Amy widened her eyes slightly and blinked. Candace shrugged her shoulders, just enough to send Amy an - it will be okay message. Mike and Ronnie
had turned and were looking down into the valley where Bob and Josh were making their way toward the first of the barns, oblivious to the small drama playing out right next to them.
A few feet away, Rain and Alicia stood staring at one another. Alicia was a year older, but smaller than Rain.
“I'm a girl,” Rain told her.
“Well, so am I,” Alicia said.
“I have a little brother,” Rain told her. “Well, he's not my really brother. He's a orphoon.”
Alicia nodded “What's a orphoon?”
“It's a boy nobody wants, I guess,” Rain told her. “But I'm not for sure.”
“I got a brother too,” Alicia said. “He's my for real brother, but he's really old and he don't like girls at all.” She told her.
“How old,” Rain asked?
“I don't know,” Alicia said. “A lot.” She looked at her fingers and then held up all ten, fanned out. “Maybe this many... Maybe even more.”
“Wow,” Rain said. “That's crazy! ... We got a school. They teach us to count there and then you can know how many for sure.”
Alicia nodded and then scrunched up her eyes. “You play with dolls?”
“Yep,” Rain assured her. “And I got a lot of them too... Wanna see them?”
Alicia smiled. “We could play,” she said.
Rain smiled back, stuck her hand out, and Alicia took it. “Come on,” she said. “I'll show you, only you got to be careful and stay away from the ledge.” She had been pulling Alicia away, but she stopped and looked back at her seriously, still holding her hand. “We could fall down a long way... Auntie Janna said so,” she whispered.
“Okay,” Alicia whispered back. She followed Rain up the ledge, holding her hand as they went, looking respectfully over the rock wall at the long valley below.
