by Joe Kelly
“and teach me karate.” Billy asked.
“and teach you karate.” Jared told him then picked the boy up and set him on the floor. Somehow keeping the sheets in place. Which was hard since Jill had half of them covering her body. “now go on.”
“okay” Billy said and ran from the room announcing to the world that he was going to get to ride the snow mobile.
“Remember when I said I wanted kids someday” Jared said. “I was wrong”
“This place has been great for the kids” Jill said still chuckling, and for you, she thought. “when we leave I hope they can deal with it.”
“me too,” Jared said softly. He hadn’t told anyone about the feeling he had that this was just the calm before the storm and that the storm was going to hit them again and soon. He wondered how bad it was going to affect morale when things went to hell on them. It won’t be good, he thought, not good at all.
✽ ✽ ✽
Logan had woken early and found Kevin gone. Fearing that Kevin might need help or worse be in real trouble, Logan left the warmth of Tatyana and his sleeping bag. Dressing quickly, he left the small office that served as his, Tatyana’s and Kevin’s bedroom.
Kevin wasn’t in the main room, or anywhere else in the building. Damn it, Logan thought as he stopped long enough to add more logs to the wood burning stove in the main room. With that done, he stepped outside into the blustery, ice cold wind and shivered. He quickly buttoned his collar and pulled his hat down low to help block the bitterly cold wind.
He had no idea how cold it was, other than it was damn cold in his book and this wasn’t the light snow fall he normally thought of as normal for Tennessee. It looked like a foot had fallen over night and more was to come. Everywhere he looked was white, everything including the trees were covered in snow.
He spotted Brian who was on guard duty “Seen Kevin?” He asked. Brian who had been pacing back and forth in front of the center nodded and came to a stop in front of Logan rubbing his hands together for warmth.
“He headed to the farm about half an hour ago. He wasn’t having too much trouble getting along but I thought it was odd to go over there so early, It’s not against the rules or anything. You don’t think something is wrong do you?”
“No, just got worried when I saw he wasn’t in his sleeping bag. He might get stuck, so I figure I will go see if he needs help.” Logan said trying not to let his teeth chatter. “Thanks,” he added as he started for the bridge that connected the center to the farm. If he stood still a minute longer, he would freeze in place.
The sun was rising when he saw Kevin in the north field of the farm, struggling to get through the snow to the tree lined riverbank. The wheels of his wheelchair bogged down in the snow and he wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Logan jogged across the field and quickly caught up with Kevin. At least the snow isn’t so deep it make’s running impossible.
“I thought I would go out for a jog, but saw you and decided I really wanted some company” Logan said as he took hold of the handles of the Wheelchair and pushed Kevin out of the snow and now mud rut he had been stuck in. He wasn’t about to admit that he had come out here to check on Kevin who was touchy about people falling all over themselves to help him.
“Don’t really feel like company” Kevin said testily, then shook his head. “Sorry, and Thanks this damn thing isn’t made for off-roading.”
“No problem Kev, to be honest I didn’t really want company either, but I couldn’t sit there and watch you freeze to death stuck in a hole” Logan said, his eyes sweeping the field and the trees along the ridge to the east. Seeing no undead, he put his body into it and got Kevin moving. “and don’t sit there and tell me I shouldn’t have helped”
Kevin remained silent for a moment as Logan pushed him under the snow laden limbs of the old trees and stopped just above the bank of the wide river that bisected the river valley.
“Thanks Logan,” Kevin said meaning it as he looked around taking in the snow-covered fields behind them and the woods around them. Tendrils of mist wove thru the trees. There was already a rind of ice in the shallow still waters at the edge of the river. A crystalline stillness hung in the air, a brittle thing as if Nature herself were waiting for something.
They both stood there silent, soaking in the beauty of the moment. This was something Logan had rarely appreciated before the world had died. For some reason, Logan suddenly felt tears well up and a deep profound loss filled him as he took in the beauty of the river valley.
Logan couldn’t have even explained it to any one why that breath-taking view reminded him of the world that had died, but it did and at that moment he and Kevin bonded.
“You know the ancient Irish, and the ancient Europeans believed that there was an eternal war between the summer and the winter. The Oak king and the Holly king, in fact the Holly king is one of the reasons that holly is so important to Christmas” Kevin said suddenly, his voice slightly muffled by the scarf over his face. “it’s symbolic of Life and death.” He said then softly recited,
“The King of Oak,
The Holly King,
Forever they shall fight,
For one brings on the summer’s morn,
The other winter’s night.”
“Where did you pick all that up?” Logan asked surprised. Kevin wasn’t much older than he was and had never really shown such a philosophical bent. Not that running around in a dead world had lent itself to many conversations that didn’t have a something to do with survival or Undead or what had happened to them on the day the world had ended.
“Why is it that everyone assumes, that a jock, well in this case, a former jock, knows nothing beyond sports?” Kevin asked with an unseen smile. “I've always loved mythology and history.”
But there was a deeper meaning to the old myth, it was about the battle between the light and the dark, good and evil. Which made the old poem fitting for the world around him. Kevin thought but didn’t say.
Even with the dead walking around, who would believe a bunch of old myths and more to the point would they believe or want to believe in the things he had seen in his nightmares that were tied to those myths. He couldn’t explain it to himself much less to the others but that thing in the hat that stalked the snow covered nightmarish landscape was as real as the world around him. No keep that to yourself and pray you’re just going nuts.
“Before the accident I was working towards a degree in History while playing football, don’t laugh but I wanted to become a history teacher,” Kevin said pushing thoughts of his nightmares away as he remembered the moment his dreams of the future were shattered.
He hadn’t been very bitter at first, but as time passed, that had begun to change. And then the dead had come and had shattered the house of cards he had built that had kept the anger and bitterness locked away. He had faced his limitations and his demons, and he hadn’t liked what he had seen. For the first time since he had lost the use of his legs he had truly felt like a cripple. What good was a man who couldn’t walk or run in a world of the undead.
Oh, the Doctors had insisted to the end that Kevin would be able to walk again, but so far that miracle had been denied him. And the things he had learned about his fellow humans had been an eye opener.
His Girlfriend at the time of the accident hadn’t been the stick by her man type. Once she had learned he was crippled she had made excuses and fled as soon as she decently could. It was her loss, he thought bitterly, the anger as well as the pain had never left him. Aside from Jake, his best friend, all his other friends had vanished within a month of finding out he would no longer be able to hike, camp, or play sports. They really didn’t want a cripple in a wheel chair putting a crimp in their getting laid plans at parties.
Jake had died the second day of the Apocalypse, trying to rescue his girlfriend from the dorm, If I could have gone with him, he might still be alive today. after that, well a cripple trying to fend for himself in the world of the dead hadn’t
been easy. But meeting Logan and the friendship they had developed had for a while made him feel better.
But the reality of his condition hadn’t been far from his mind and lately the bitterness had come roaring back partly, he admitted because of the nightmares. Kevin took a deep breath of the cold air trying to forget the horrors he had seen or the real nightmare of trying to survive as a cripple in the apocalypse.
Logan rested his hands on the handgrips of Kevin’s wheel chair. “So what else is there about this time of year that most people don’t know?” he asked sensing Kevin was on the edge of getting depressed and wanting to help keep the man from going over the edge.
Kevin laughed, a bit harshly maybe, recognizing the attempt for what it was. “There’s actually a lot, some of it magical, some of it not. But I guess what really mattered about it; it was a celebration of life amidst and out of death. Pre-Christian it was the death and rebirth of the sun. It was about Mystery, magic, and fear.” He said, “Kind of fitting considering what we are going through don’t you think?” Kevin said grimly then gave a strained smile. He didn’t elaborate beyond that. “Enough of that though, thanks for wheeling me out here to look. It’s kind of hard to move myself thru the snow. I might have to have some off-road tires with snow chains added to get around out here” Kevin said with a slight smile that lasted for a heartbeat and then was gone. “at least the undead are staying away” he added.
No one had the least clue why that was, there were plenty of theories. Logan had heard Jared discussing that topic with some of the others. Most seemed of the opinion that the undead hovered in the cities and towns they had died in looking for the living, until they spotted and followed vehicles. Others thought it was the cold weather.
A few of the people, like Jared, thought it was a combination of things including the rugged terrain that surrounded the farm. Logan didn’t know what to think, but as long as the area was free of undead, he wasn’t going to complain one bit.
Logan chuckled at Kevin’s joke, weak though it was, then started pushing Kevin back up the snow-covered path. It was hard going but Logan didn’t mind and it felt good working his muscles not to mention it warmed him up.
“wait a second” Kevin said. “Look at that view!” Logan stopped dutifully, if Kevin wanted to take in the view then that was fine with him. Almost against his will he saw the valley around them and realized he had not paid all that much attention to it before.
The sky was a pale blue and gold in the east, and glory limed the top of the eastern mountain, casting a shadow across the farm where light spilled out of the windows of the log homes, creating pools of light and warmth on the snow-covered ground. Oil lanterns had been hung above the doorways of the out buildings and shone like fading stars. The Snow and ice-covered branches of the few trees scattered around the cabins, glittered like crystal in the growing light. It reminded him of those old paintings you used to see around Christmas. For a moment he could remember every Christmas morning he’d had as a kid.
Kevin had it right, Logan thought, there was a magic to it, something that he had forgotten. Now he was in a world where the horror of nightmares walked, and a man in a wheel chair with a casual word had opened his eyes to the magic that he had thought had been left behind in his child hood.
Logan’s eyes were drawn to the blacksmith shop where the smith, a muscular fifty-year-old was using bellows to get the fire hot before he started work, two teen aged boys, apprentices now, watched and listened closely as the man talked.
“It’s like stepping back in time” Logan muttered. Just a few months ago, those two teenagers would have been playing video games, trying to get laid and dreaming of college and escaping home. Now, now they were learning how to make tools, nails, hinges and horse shoes.
“It’s our lives now, unless we can find a lot more people with a wide array of knowledge, we will be living like this for the next hundred years or longer. I need to talk to Jared about that. But I bet he has already thought about that angle.” Kevin responded then pointed towards the visitor center. “Looks like John Graham is visiting again” Logan nodded seeing the snow mobiles that were approaching the Center.
He had been surprised to see snowmobiles here in the first place, but he supposed it made sense, that snow fall was usually heavier in the mountains than down below and that something like a snowmobile might be used during bad conditions to get around on or to do rescue work. He did know that according to Graham those were the only snowmobiles in Cherokee, and the park had never had more than a few itself.
“He and Jared have certainly gotten chummy since they met” Logan commented.
“They have a lot in common, prior military, outdoorsman and seem to have the same coarse sense of humor” Kevin commented shrugging under the blanket.
“Did you just say coarse?” Logan asked, almost laughing. “Who the hell uses words like Coarse?”
“Wait a few minutes and I might use ‘you’ll rue the day you laughed at me you uncultured boob’.” Kevin said archly, raising an eyebrow then ruined the look with a genuine smile. Logan chuckled in reply.
Most people before the zombies would have been nice, Kevin thought. But few would have tried to actively become a friend. Cripples were to be treated like China, very carefully and used very little because they might break, or that’s how many had acted around him, Kevin thought. Logan was different, He had never once treated me as a cripple, never doubted I could pull my own weight and in short never seemed to see the wheelchair unless something happened that made him notice the damn thing.
Like realizing, I couldn’t run up a flight of stairs when we were being chased by a group of zombies. His mind zoomed back to the memory, the terror that had filled him and his fear that Logan would just leave him behind to slow the dead.
Logan had yanked open the stairwell door, more than a little scared that the stairwell might be filled with zombies. It had, thankfully, been empty. He pushed Kevin in and then pulled the door shut wedging the head of the fire axe he carried under the bottom of the door, kicking it to drive it deeper into the crack as the pursuing undead slammed into the door on the other side. Logan looked at the stairs and frowned as he realized he couldn’t push the wheel chair up or down them, then to Kevin’s surprise he quickly outlined his plan. All the while the door behind them was slowly inching open as the undead pushed and beat on it.
Using their belts, he had strapped Kevin to his back, folded the wheelchair then started down the stairs they had been almost to the second floor when the stair well door above them finally opened enough for the undead to pour through.
Kevin had shot anything that moved behind them, he hadn’t killed many, in fact the only ones he had managed to kill had been close enough to almost grab him, but as each one fell the ones swarming up behind had tripped and fallen over the corpses giving them needed breathing room.
It had been rough on the two of them, getting dwon those stairs and eventually escaping the undead, perhaps rougher on Logan than on Kevin. But it had been no picnic for Kevin either. They had done it though and Kevin had made a lifelong friend.
“Look I don’t want to rush you or anything Logan, but if we don’t get inside shortly I’m going to lose the few things that still work below my belt.” Kevin said after several minutes. Shivering from the cold. Logan laughed and tried to speed up.
“Good morning” a soft almost musical sounding woman’s voice said from behind them as they reached the bridge that would take them across to the Visitor center. Logan looked back to see Mattie Caldwell, who managed to look quite good in that old fashioned dress that had been her work uniform.
She gave Logan a bright smile that really brought out the cold reddened cheeks, she flipped the long dark ponytail back over her shoulder as she turned those warm golden-brown eyes on Kevin and her smile if anything grew brighter.
“Morning Kevin, how do you like our farm” she asked, sincerely too as far as Logan could tell.
“It’s beautifu
l, just wish I wasn’t stuck in this damn thing so I could walk it every morning” Kevin replied his eyes sliding shyly away from Mattie's eyes. That he liked Mattie was obvious, that he wasn’t sure she actually liked him was just about as obvious or maybe he was scared it wasn’t interest she was showing, but pity. I think she does like him, but what I think doesn’t matter, being in a wheel chair gave Kevin a different perspective on women and most likely not a good one in general, Logan thought.
Logan kept his head down, not interrupting the conversation as Mattie walked with them. He hid a smile as he pushed Kevin across the bridge and onto the cement path that ran to the Visitor center. Kevin was getting chattier with the woman, hopefully that was a good sign.
More importantly he hoped Mattie’s interest would get Kevin up and out of the dark place he had slowly been sliding into. Because if it didn’t Logan was worried that Kevin might just decide to do something extreme.
As the three of them entered, the warm visitor center and removed their jackets. They saw Jared, John Graham, and Steve clustered around a table talking quietly and studying a map.
