Savage

by Jade C. Jamison

  I had wanted to do some brainstorming so we could think of other potential ideas, but the men seemed to think this was the best idea. It probably was.

  It gave me hope.

  So I put the notepad and pen away and then walked back to the living room, planning to grab the metal bucket that was beside the fireplace so I could fill it up with snow and melt it so I could wash dishes, but all three of them were already up, putting on shoes and coats, ready to get the help we needed so we could get home.

  Vera muttered, “I wonder how bad we stink from not showering.”

  I hadn’t thought we smelled bad, simply because we’d only been there a couple of days and we hadn’t done much that would have made us sweaty and gross smelling, but once she’d placed that thought in my head, I worried. I hoped we wouldn’t make a bad impression on anyone inclined to help us. Of course, we could try to explain our dilemma. Then I almost laughed at myself. The neighbors would know the power was out, even if they had a generator, and they would understand.

  I grabbed my coat and slid it on, and Larry once more led the way to the door. I was now to the point where I didn’t mind that he’d kind of appointed himself to be our leader (and I didn’t think anyone else cared most of the time either), but he needed to realize that sometimes he’d have to step back.

  Like now.

  He didn’t know where the Bransons lived. I told him they were to the west and, I supposed, he could potentially find them, but it was irritating that he wasn’t even asking me. Once we were on the deck, he paused and, of course, we all followed suit.

  He turned, an eyebrow raised, and said, “You know…we haven’t been able to keep up with the news. I don’t want to put the fear of God into ya all, but we might want to be, ah, prepared.”

  We didn’t have to be geniuses to know what he meant. He meant that we needed to be on guard for anyone who might be infected…and, as much as I hated to give him credit (because spending time in close quarters with all these people was starting to make me a little edgy and irritable), I had to admit that he was right. Before I could answer, though, Kevin said, “What do you have in mind?”

  Larry looked me square in the eyes. “Your aunt own any guns?”

  “She used to. She and my Uncle Felix used to go hunting in these mountains all the time. But I think she gave all her rifles to her kids after my uncle passed.”

  Kevin frowned. “A woman living by herself removed from everything and she didn’t have a gun?”

  “She never saw a reason to. She trusted her neighbors.”

  “It’s not the neighbors I’d worry about.”

  Larry added, “Yeah, and I’m sure she saw her fair share of bears up here.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to debate why my aunt lived the way she had. And it turned out her thinking had been justified. She’d never had need for a gun. I was pretty sure she had a small handgun somewhere, but I didn’t know how effective bullets would be against someone infected anyway. Kevin said, “Why don’t we look in the garage first?”

  I nodded, turning around and opening the door again. Without a word, we all trudged through the house to the door of the garage. When I opened it, the overwhelming stench of gasoline hit me. That was another thing I thought maybe we should clean up before we left…but I knew time was of the essence. We all walked inside and Kevin said, “Damn, Dingel, it smells like the prelude to an arson out here.”

  Larry shrugged. “Man, I’m sorry. That was bad.” I glanced at Larry, expecting him to look abashed but…there was something else intermingled with it, something I wasn’t able to translate. I blamed my overwrought nerves. Kevin nodded as we all began looking around on the shelves in the garage.

  There wasn’t much in there. A few tools as well as boxes of Christmas decorations, but we were striking out in the weapon department. Vera got on her hands and knees to look on a lower shelf close to the garage door and pulled out a crowbar. “Think this’ll work?”

  Larry smiled, looking almost like a proud father. “Hell, yeah.”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows. “That gives me an idea.” He opened the car door, remembering the makeshift weapon we’d planned to travel with. It was less than a minute before he had the tire iron in his hand. I didn’t know how effective it would be, but—for some reason—he looked formidable.

  Larry nodded and looked at me. “Maybe we should head out to the shed or the barn and see what they have to offer.”

  The four of us made our way to the outbuildings, and both Vera and Kevin decided that they too would look for other weapons in case they found something better. There were lots of garden tools, and I couldn’t decide between the big hedge clippers or a shovel. Larry found a sledgehammer and grinned as he picked it up and swung it around.

  He seemed to be in his element.

  I finally deferred to my companions. “Which would be better?”

  “They’d both be okay. You probably should ask yourself which you can wield better. Is the shovel too long and bulky?”

  I gave it some thought. “Yeah, probably.”

  Kevin smiled. “Then you should go with the hedge clippers.” He was right…but somehow the shovel felt better.

  “I could keep—things at bay better with the shovel. It’s longer.”

  He shrugged. “Up to you.”

  I nodded and put the hedge clippers down, tightening my grip on the handle of the shovel. We were ready to go.

  As we walked across my aunt’s property, I noticed several things. What made the biggest impression on me was how the air smelled clean and fresh. As we passed by the occasional tree, the smell of the pines lingered in the air. The snow was still soft but deep, and it was going to take us longer to get to the neighbors’ than I’d originally thought. I was wearing boots but not snow boots, and I knew my feet were going to be cold by the time we finally made it there.

  I reminded myself that it was okay, though. Soon, we’d be on our way home. My feet could warm up later.

  I also noticed that the sun was already lower on the horizon. We needed to hurry, so I started walking a little faster. It was damned cold. I wasn’t used to temperatures this low, but that was part of being in the high country. Aunt Lou had loved these woods and loved the weather too, but she had mentioned the past couple of years that the cold was starting to get to her. Feeling it firsthand, I could understand why.

  The sky was a cool, light blue decorated with thin white clouds here and there. No stormy gray clouds, and for that I was grateful. We needed the sun and decent weather for our trip home. It could storm once we got back.

  Another two steps and I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, stopping me from moving. Larry’s voice was low but I knew it was him. “What in the fresh fuck is this?” Even had he not stopped me, the tone in his voice would have made me freeze. I could tell that he sensed danger, and my subconscious felt the need to heed it. Kevin stopped walking beside me and I saw Vera on Larry’s other side, so we all stood almost side by side and looked at the edge of the clearing where the forest began in earnest. There I could see what Larry was referring to. There were several people who had spotted us and were moving toward us with purpose. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that they were infected…and we were probably fucked.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Cigaro” – System of a Down

  EVERYTHING I’D EVER seen in movies about the undead flashed before my eyes, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that movies were nothing but fiction.

  Fiction was great…when you were sitting on your couch, curled up under a blanket and munching popcorn, but it did absolutely nothing to prepare me for reality. These creatures (I was hesitant to call them people because they didn’t seem to be human anymore—whatever had made them human was long gone, devoured by the virus) weren’t loping at us, with jerky motions, dragging a leg behind them. They were on the run and I felt like I’m sure the deer who lived in these mountains often felt when a mountain lion decided she wa
s hungry.

  We were prey.

  They were on the hunt and they were running toward us. I could feel my heart forcing the blood to pump double time through my veins, my fingers shaking, my mouth growing dry. I stood still and saw my friends in my peripheral vision prepare for battle. Both men moved forward and Vera lifted her crowbar, ready to strike. I watched it all as though it were a movie and I was sitting back at home, that bowl of popcorn on my lap.

  I froze. My heart was thumping in my chest and time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, so I watched as they got closer and my friends steeled themselves for engagement. As though I was removed from the action, I saw chopping, swinging, lunging…as if I weren’t there on the battlefield. Then I saw the violent gray body lunge at me, teeth gnashing and fingers clawing, but I couldn’t make myself move. All around me, I saw my companions felling these creatures but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do it.

  It would be my demise.

  I could hear Kevin beside me, yelling at me while fending off his own attacker, but then he lunged in front of me, shoving the tire iron in the neck of the creature that was ready to eat me alive, making it drop to the ground.

  And then, suddenly, it was over.

  They were all dead. My friends’ weapons—and their response—had saved us.

  Everything became more vivid then. The blood seemed even redder on the pristine snow; the skies were a brilliant blue, the evergreens, the richest shade of olive I’d ever seen.

  And then time sped up again, and Kevin gripped my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. I could sense Larry beside me ready to say something too, but he was leaving it up to the man who had my attention. “You can’t just stand there and do nothing. They’ll kill you, Nina. It’s you or them. Kill or die, Nina Davis.” His jaw rippled before he repeated each word with force. “Kill or die.”

  In spite of the fear that had drained my body and despite the new appreciation I suddenly had for living, it didn’t escape my attention that he’d called me by my maiden name.

  His face was so close to mine, his expression intense, his eyes like cold steel. He was a thing to be feared, and yet…I expected him to kiss me right then, and it would have been full of years of denied passion.

  I wasn’t sure where those emotions had come from, except maybe that I was feeling more and more alive as time went on, and being so near death reawakened me even more. Life was a thing to be appreciated and revered—celebrated.

  My heart continued beating in my chest like a metronome and I blinked, searching Kevin’s eyes for whatever else it was he was trying to tell me. At last, I was able to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth and I said, “Thank you.”

  He let a breath of air out of his mouth and released my shoulders, and I could see relief in his eyes. And then he started laughing…and laughing and laughing, until first Larry, then Vera, and even I joined him. When he stopped, he said, “Were you thanking me for the lecture?”

  I’d laughed so hard, experiencing a bit of a catharsis, that I had tears streaming down my cheeks. “No…for saving my life.”

  He shrugged. “It was nothing.” I’d made him uncomfortable—I could tell, because after dismissing it with a few words, he began walking in the direction we’d first started. I looked down at the bodies again before joining all of them heading toward the neighbors’ house, our original destination.

  When I caught up to them, Larry asked, “Did you recognize any of those people?”

  I stopped moving my feet, frozen once more, and then I turned my head slowly to look back at the bodies. Larry quit walking too, waiting for my answer. “Oh, my God.” I swallowed, now that the saliva was flowing freely again. “That’s the Branson family.” The realization hit me with force. “Oh, my God,” I said again, and then I felt a flood of tears pour from my eyes. I could barely hear my voice as I repeated my mournful mantra a final time. “Oh, my God.”

  Vera put a hand on my shoulder. “You gonna be all right?”

  I swiped at my face. It wasn’t that I’d really known these people—quite the opposite, in fact. It was simply the sheer realization that people I had once known of were succumbing to an illness that completely stripped them from their humanity, leaving nothing but a starving shell. I nodded.

  “That the whole family right there?” Larry asked, tilting his head toward the red and white carnage.

  “I don’t know.”

  He scowled. By that time, Kevin had walked back to our group and then Larry began talking. “The infection took all those people. If that’s not the whole family, there might be more in their house. Can we take them? I have no doubt, but not if we’re ambushed—not if we have to go snooping to find things.” He looked at me. “Are there any other neighbors close by?”

  I searched my brain. “Yeah, but I’m not sure how close. I thought of the Bransons because they were very close to my Aunt’s house.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember the drive down the road my aunt lived on, both from Winchester and also from Chipeta Springs. “I can’t remember the name of the people who live on the other side—but I think they might be kind of close too.”

  Larry sucked air in through his nose. “Everyone okay with that?”

  Kevin nodded his head, and I realized, as Larry began walking in the opposite direction, that his poll had not included Vera and me. When he’d asked if everyone was okay with the change of plans, he meant the other man in the group, not Vera or me. I wasn’t going to ask or challenge, because I was tired and just wanted to go home, but maybe in a few weeks, when things went back to normal and Larry and I would talk over my chain link fence once more, I might give him some good-natured ribbing while helping him understand that women have good input to offer as well.

  Today, however, was not the day.

  We walked in silence for a while as I continued to process my thoughts. I was still in a bit of shock over what had transpired in the clearing, and I hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with anything else like that. I realized the Bransons weren’t fully people anymore, but the thought of fighting and killing them left me cold.

  After a bit, Larry said, “Maybe we should walk down to the road so we’re not having to hike all this terrain. What do you all think?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I think they do live closer to the main road than my aunt’s house…but walking down there’ll add another half hour. Do we have that kind of time?”

  He looked up at the sky. It was mid-afternoon, which meant we had a limited amount of time left before dark swallowed the mountains…and, unlike living in the city, darkness there meant pitch black unless the moon was bright.

  Larry pondered. “All right. If we make it somewhere and the people there are okay, even if they don’t want to give us a ride to the gas station tonight, they’d probably do it in the morning. They might be willing to let us stay at their home or drive us back here tonight—”

  Kevin shook his head and Larry paused. “Think about it, man. Seeing what we just saw—would you be willing to let complete strangers in your house?”

  I could see the gears turning in Larry’s mind. “Okay, you got me. Maybe best to do it when we’re not under the gun. Okay, so…we’re gettin’ kinda used to sleeping at Nina’s aunt’s house. If we have to one more day, it won’t hurt, right? So…let’s plan on walking toward the other neighbor’s house—not go to the road to save time—and if we’re nowhere near it in an hour, we head back and try again tomorrow. Everyone okay with that?”

  There was a general consensus, with all of us nodding our heads and muttering something affirmative, but once more, I saw that the only opinion Larry was truly interested in was Kevin’s. It was really starting to get under my skin, but I just let out a long breath of air through my nose and began following when Larry started walking.

  No one else seemed to notice. Vera had been living with her husband for longer than I could even guess, so either she was used to it or didn’t care. Kevin…well, he was a man and I knew, from years of working
around underprivileged people, that those who weren’t marginalized often didn’t notice when others were. It didn’t affect them directly, so noticing something subtle like what Larry was doing wasn’t hard to overlook.

  Unless, of course, you were the one he was intentionally disregarding.

  I focused on the motion of my feet, trying to ignore how the cold had already permeated my toes. After walking down one slope and starting up another, we fell back into our previous formation—Larry and Vera in front, Kevin and I in back. We didn’t talk much at first. I noticed that we were all cautious, looking at the trees in front and to the side of us for any signs of movement that shouldn’t be there. It also helped that the snow was fresh and untouched, so we would see immediately if anyone had been there recently.

  Kevin cleared his throat and then, after another few moments, asked, “You doing all right?”

  I glanced over at him, not sure why he was asking. “Yeah…”

  He shrugged. “I, uh…I’m not really good with the whole crying thing. I’ve never known what to do. I…like to fix things, and it seems like whenever a woman is crying, it’s hard to figure out what to fix. I’m kinda out of my league when it comes to tears.”

  For some reason, I found his confession endearing, and I wasn’t sure why he was telling me, but after Larry’s continual testosterone-fueled leadership moves, I was happy to talk with a man who seemed a little more sensitive. I shook my head and then smiled, but I didn’t look over at him. My eyes were facing front while continuing to scan the landscape. I knew it would take all of us working together to keep us safe. “Eh. I didn’t really know them. It was the idea that really threw me for a loop…it was a pure emotional response. I’m not sure where it came from.”

  I hadn’t realized Vera and Larry could hear me because Kevin and I had lagged behind a bit, but she said, “You have a lot on your mind, hon. Your kids, your aunt. I’m surprised you didn’t collapse back there and just let it all go.”

  Inside, I knew she was right. I had a theory—we were all like pressure cookers. If we let steam out on occasion (or frequently, if needed), we could keep the contents cooking without exploding, but if we failed to let it go, we’d have a cataclysmic meltdown—it would be dangerous, and it definitely would not be pretty. So, over the course of my life, I’d allowed myself to be a “venter”—I’d let it out whenever I felt the pressure getting to me, and I maintained safe levels. Only once in my early adulthood had I stuffed it all inside and then let it boil over—I’d taken it all out on my husband and we’d nearly divorced that night, because all those things I’d held in I let fly out of my mouth all at once…and, in that context, most of it wasn’t even relevant, but it had made me a mean-spirited, nasty person, and letting it out like that hadn’t made me feel better at all. It had hurt me and Darren, and that night—after we’d talked through everything—I’d vowed inside to never do it again.