by Lee Ragans
“Sorry, my family has been here for months. We did not know.”
“We don’t check here often.”
“What are you checking for?”
“The dead.”
The girl tilted her head, “Oh, zombies. We have not seen any since Tennessee.”
“You came all the way from Tennessee?” Joel knew the location on the maps. He calculated that it would be nearly impossible to make the walk that far. They had no way to carry enough water and food for the months it would take to walk.
“We came from Atlanta.”
“Why would you make such a long journey?”
The girl thought for a moment. Then said, “There are just too many people there. It was time to head out and find a new home.”
“I hear your words, but they make no sense. The Spirit Tribe is not going to leave the land.”
“You keep talking like people from the stories of Indians, but you don’t look very Indian.”
Joel smiled, “My father is Jewish my mother is a member of the tribe. So I am in the tribe.”
She smiled, “So we wanted to stay here for the winter. Are we going to have to leave?”
“How many of you are there?”
She looked down sheepishly and said, “Just me and my husband. I suppose the smart thing to do was to lie and saw there were more of us or just me.”
“No need to lie. We have never had any visitors.”
“So why would you two head out? How did you make it this far?”
“My grandmother and her husbands traveled the entire country in the years after the outbreak. She taught my father. My father taught me. We travel light, gather water and food locally and make friends.”
Joel noticed the rifle from the distant window, “I suppose you shoot people when you need too…”
“Yeah. It has come up a time or two, but mostly just crazies.”
“I cannot say that you are welcome to stay, but I also cannot tell you to leave. I will give my report to the elders tonight. I do not think one young couple poses a threat greater than the band of feral cats that usually lives here.”
The girl backed away as Joel did the same. The walk back was filled with processing new information. They had come from a city that was too crowded. They lived off the land. They had so much to share. Joel hoped the elders would let him go back and talk to them. There was no precedent on how to deal with this, so he had no idea what was going to happen. Though for the first time in his 40 years, he knew that the world was not dead outside of the Spirit Tribe.
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